I've read some of the research and am convinced, however, I am worried about the places that I have to run on. I mostly have to run on roads with a lot of gravel and litter, etc. I really don't have a lot of options about other places to run. Any suggestions about how to get started? I've always had really "sensitive" feet too. Little gravel bits and stuff drive me crazy. I just don't know... Advice???

I just ordered a new pair of running sneaks....grrr... Maybe I should send them back and go for the vibram instead.... I'm perplexed.

Seems most people are advising making the transition with super-short workouts (like 1 mile max) and choosing places with relatively little litter. Might be a good time to scout out some new routes. Me, I've just been running on my treadmill... but I'm a chicken.

Vibrams are great for running where ever you want to. I moved from a regular shoe -> Huaraches -> Vibrams. I would say that vibrams are currently resistant to anything I've stepped on. I think the thing I noticed the most was a vertical stump of a probably 1/4th inch tree. Foot felt fine after, and I shifted most of my weight off that leg once I started to feel it pushing into the bottom. Vibrams feel a lot more like running barefoot than a 6mm huarache. Hope you have a great time. I don't have a whole lot of knowledge to add.

Ed4, I saw the picture in the Boston report and it really looks like you're heel striking. Do you? I wouldn't have thought that possible barefoot/FF.

My heels do touch the ground first. But they don't bear much weight. My knee bends to absorb the initial impact, and my foot rotates downward fast enough to catch most of my weight. I've seen myself on slow-motion video doing it (I'm waiting to get a copy of it, I would love to post it.. Hopefully with the accompanying accelerometer graphs.) It's not easy to describe. It also can't be taken out of the larger context of what the rest of my body is doing. Knees bent, back straight, center of gravity slightly forward. I think of the foot landing as the effect, and the overall posture as the cause. When people fixate on trying to make their feet do something different, they just get frustrated. It doesn't happen in your feet, it happens in your core. Your feet will take care of themselves once you have your back, hips, and knees in the right place at the right time. When I first started trying to improve my form, it was my hip flexors and deep abdominals that got sore first, because I had been under-utilizing them for years. This was even before I started experimenting with being barefoot. The barefooting just makes it all automatic. I can run pretty well in shoes, but it takes a lot more concentration.

How did you improve your form? I've been reading about Chi running. I have horrible form, and I know I heel strike too. Do those Vibrams work as well as barefoot? My old boot camp instructor used to yell at me to pick up my feet. We would do laps with exaggerated heel to butt running. Should I try that?

Oh, and to answer your other questions: form drills like your drill instructor used may indeed help. I haven't really done much of that myself, but I know others who have. As for how I transitioned myself, around January 2007 I started out with the exercises in Chi Running, stuck with that for several months and felt significant improvement. At first my core muscles and hips were quite sore, as I discovered I hadn't really been using them before. By summer I started increasing my mileage again and realized I was still running badly much of the time. It took constant concentration to stick to better form, otherwise I would slip back into bad habits and start having knee pain again. Then I started adding some barefoot runs. At first I would just take off my shoes and carry them for a little while. I would usually do this on smooth but hard surfaces, like paved walking paths. I noticed immediately that it was much more natural to maintain a good form while barefoot. Just doing some barefoot running at the beginning of a run would help me find a good form for the remainder, even with shoes on. Soon afterward I bought some FiveFingers and started doing some runs in those. I spent about a month switching between normal shoes, FiveFingers, and bits of barefooting (usually by carrying the FiveFingers or shoes for a while). This was around August 2007. Eventually I noticed that I just felt more beat up after running in normal shoes, and I retired them completely, some time in September. I began progressing much faster once I stopped mixing in shoes. At this point I was doing about half barefoot and half in FiveFingers, and I stuck with this through the fall months. I did my first race in FiveFingers, a 5k. Then the winter came and I struggled to maintain my new form in warmer shoes with less feedback. In the spring of 2008 I started doing a much higher proportion barefoot and felt really good. I kept it up all that summer and fall, and ran a PR marathon in FiveFingers (3:05). The next winter I did much better, probably because I had more time to internalize my new form and could do it even with less feedback (Teva water shoes, still not at all "heavy" by most runner's standards). That brings us to spring 2009, in which I've been running mostly barefoot since it has been warm enough. I've done some training in FiveFingers to get ready for the Boston marathon, and ran the race in them. I just wasn't confident enough to race it barefoot given the lack of barefoot running over the winter. Now that it's past I'm running exclusively barefoot, and plan to build mileage all summer and race barefoot in the fall.

Good luck, let us know how it goes.