Baring their soles for the sake of a good run

Running barefoot on the edge of the surf is a quintessential California experience, but some people aren’t content with the occasional shoeless jaunt on the beach.

They happily doff their tennies to go for regular jogs, hikes, even marathons. The practice, they say, is good for the body as well as the mind.

Not only do some experts agree, a major shoe company is launching a shoe to bridge both worlds.

If the world of barefoot running has a spokesman, it’s Ken Bob Saxton. Saxton, a 49-year-old computer technician from Long Beach, started running barefoot on the beach in 1980 and years later made the transition to pavement. He did his first marathon barefoot in 1997. Now, he says, putting on running shoes seems foreign. “I can’t feel the ground, and I feel like I’m missing something,� says Saxton, whose website is www.runningbarefoot.org. “You lose that sense of feel, like you’re trying to do things with gloves on.�

Saxton also noticed that when running barefoot, his landing mechanics changed. Instead of coming down hard on his heels, he set down lightly on his heels and harder on the ball of his foot, which he sees as the body’s natural shock absorber. Running barefoot, he thinks, has made him less prone to injury as he’s strengthened his foot and ankle muscles.

Curious shod runners often ask about the soles of his feet (tougher than most, but not hobbit-like) and pain; Saxton says the worst injury he’s had happened while crossing a stream, and he cut his foot. “Comfort is overrated,� he says with a laugh. “If you’re comfortable all the time, then you can’t appreciate it. If you get used to the variety, then it’s invigorating.�

Sports such as soccer and football have never adapted to barefooting it, some for obvious reasons such as the lack of foot protection. Shoeless runners are still in the minority, although Saxton says he’s seen numbers increase over the years: The 2004 L.A. Marathon had four barefoot runners, and eight in 2005.

Many people’s first introduction to barefoot exercise is through yoga and Pilates, and often their only exposure to shoeless runners was via barefoot South African runner Zola Budd’s infamous collision with American Mary Decker in the 1984 Olympics.

Many African athletes train shoeless, and Vin Lananna, Stanford University’s director of track and field/cross-country has his athletes train barefoot to enhance performance. Barefoot hiking has its own aficionados and an unofficial leader in Richard Keith Frazine, a Connecticut-based store owner who satisfied his curiosity about hiking barefoot about 35 years ago and hasn’t ventured in boots since.

“If you’re accustomed to feeling nothing more from your feet than the rise and fall of your own weight in your shoes, this is very different,� says Frazine, author of “The Barefoot Hiker.� Although some might describe the sensation at first as painful, he says, “When you walk outside in bare feet, in the first couple of moments the sensations are a lot louder.�

Hiking barefoot, he adds, becomes another sense. “It becomes as much a part of your being there as seeing or hearing or smelling the environment.�

His activity has slowed a little in recent years because of joint pain in his upper body, but so far he’s had no problems with his lower body, which he attributes to hiking barefoot.

Long Beach sports medicine podiatrist John Pagliano says running barefoot can be a good thing if one’s biomechanics are good, meaning there are no injuries and no conditions such as overpronation, which might be exacerbated by running without shoes. But start slow, he warns, and walk barefoot before attempting to run. It takes the body awhile to adjust to running barefoot, and injuries can happen when foot and leg muscles aren’t properly trained.

Although it seems the feet and legs would suffer having less cushioning without shoes, barefoot runners such as Saxton think that the softer heel strike helps prevent injuries such as Achilles tendinitis. Pagliano points out, however, that older runners tend to lose the fat pads on the bottoms of their feet, so running barefoot might be more difficult and less comfortable for them.

“If you run and you have no problems, go ahead and do it,� he says. “I used to work in Hawaii, and you see people running down the street barefoot. It really does help strengthen the muscles of your feet.� Pagliano adds that it also switches on proprioceptors, the sensory receptors found in muscles, tendons and joints that are sensitive to body motion and position.

Exercising barefoot has enough potential benefits that Nike is taking a serious look at it. About three years ago the company, in its quest to come up with a new lightweight running shoe, discovered that Stanford coach Lananna had his athletes train barefoot on grass. Nike did some research on its own and discovered that barefoot runners do rely less on the heel and more on the ball of the foot for shock absorption. Tobie Hatfield, the company’s senior engineer for advanced products, also looked at the feet of some African athletes and discovered that their feet look stronger. “They look like they’ve been in a weight gym working out,� he says.

In applying these findings to a new shoe design, Hatfield says he wanted more flexibility, and sliced the prototype sole length- and width-wise, making deep grooves. “That,� he says, “allowed the muscles to be more in control rather than the shoe be in control.�

The result is Nike’s new Free line of shoes for running and cross-training. The company plans to apply some of the barefoot principles to its other shoes. “I think that natural motion is even more of a big deal here,� Hatfield says. But be advised that the new shoes take some breaking in. They come with an owners manual -- something that bare feet don’t.