anyone familiar with beach running. i'm going to start running barefoot in the mornings and in the evenings jogging with sneakers on the harder surface.


any good pros to beach running over pavement?

2/23/2009 8:17:17 PM

I broke my foot doing it.

2/23/2009 8:17:46 PM

IT'S NOT SEXY.
it's awkward.

2/23/2009 8:22:51 PM

stick to running shoes...unless you're already used to running around barefoot.

Stay in the harder sand (kinda wet) so its easy to glide but is also gentle.

2/23/2009 8:23:49 PM

Injury waiting to happen...

Stick w/ the shoes.

[Edited on February 23, 2009 at 8:45 PM. Reason : w]

2/23/2009 8:45:07 PM

Ignore most of the advice in this thread. Running barefoot is great, it's also better on your joints.

2/23/2009 8:47:24 PM

It's fine unless you have flat feet, then it's not fine.

2/23/2009 8:49:12 PM

What? It's better for you if you have flat fleet, for a variety of reasons. Regular shoes can mess you up if you have flat feet, but without shoes on your body will run more naturally. Was the body made to run with or without shoes? We wear shoes to protect our feet,.

2/23/2009 8:52:23 PM

yea, check out message_topic.aspx?topic=419632

when running barefoot, i much prefer softer surfaces like dirt and sand. it takes time for your feet to get used to harder surfaces like asphalt and concrete.

over time you'll built up calluses and you'll be able to run on any surface, even gravel

2/23/2009 8:53:24 PM

It made my knees hurt baaad. It puts extra stress on the tendons in the back and sides of your knees. I'd run on a solid surface and walk on the beach.

2/23/2009 8:55:02 PM

^^^
Our bodies are made to run in shoes. Humankind has been wearing shoes for thousands of years and as a result our original caveman foot-structure has deteriorated to the point where shoes are almost a necessity.


[Edited on February 23, 2009 at 8:56 PM. Reason : ^]

2/23/2009 8:55:25 PM

^^^^That's how I've broken both of my feet from running barefoot at the beach.

[Edited on February 23, 2009 at 8:56 PM. Reason : ]

2/23/2009 8:55:46 PM

how does that happen? breaking your feet.

2/23/2009 8:56:33 PM

You run and a bone breaks. I've broken both of my feet twice

2/23/2009 8:57:24 PM

you've got week feet

ive broken a bone in my foot before, and it does suck. but thats when i ran in shoes. ever since i started running barefoot the muscles in my feet have gotten stronger

2/23/2009 8:58:03 PM

I sure as hell do I broke it first playing soccer, then I broke the other one at the beach for senior week, then the first one again running on the beach again, then the other one again tripping over a root at Lutheridge.

Last summer was the first summer in 4 years I wasn't in a boot

2/23/2009 8:59:43 PM

owww, i had the boot too. that thing sucked. i wore that sucker for like 4 months

2/23/2009 9:00:15 PM

It really sucked when I had to wear it during the summer and working at a summer camp and trying to keep up with the kids, and it REALLY sucked when I broke my foot the first time and missed out in the playoffs my junior year

2/23/2009 9:01:58 PM

sounds like you need to ask "THE HOFF"

2/23/2009 9:04:56 PM

Quote :

"Our bodies are made to run in shoes. Humankind has been wearing shoes for thousands of years and as a result our original caveman foot-structure has deteriorated to the point where shoes are almost a necessity."

No. This is just stupid, and I hope you don't really believe that.

As to breaking feet running on the beach, sounds like you just have weak bones and/or you are clumsy... Not so much a problem with running barefoot as a problem with the.. runner.

2/23/2009 9:05:38 PM

No I've broken my bones because I have flat feet. That's what the orthopedic told me, the reason I keep breaking them is because they are weak. When and if I ever get back to running like I used to I have to do an arch support tape so I won't break my feet again.

2/23/2009 9:07:26 PM

Quote :

"No. This is just stupid, and I hope you don't really believe that. "

i think he was being sarcastic

2/23/2009 9:12:01 PM

^^^ maybe it's not true that humans are "supposed" to wear shoes..... but Americans most definitely are. If you've lived 20 or 30 years, wearing shoes every time you walk out of the house, you cannot just start running barefooted and expect everything to be OK.

Now..... if you grew up in Africa or rural India and have never owned a pair of shoes in your life, maybe you'd be fine. But not here, and not now.


and btw, running on the beach sucks for many reasons. off the top of my head:
1) you'll get sand in your shoes and socks, leading to blisters, even if you mostly run in the packed sand
2) if you run in the packed sand, you'll end up getting wet
3) it throws off your sense of time and space. the horizons are all messed up - if you look down the beach, for example, and say "i'll just go to that building up there - it can't be more than 10 minutes away", you'll end up running 30 minutes before ever getting tot he building.

[Edited on February 23, 2009 at 9:14 PM. Reason : .]

2/23/2009 9:14:16 PM

^

how is any of this a problem? i ran today and it felt great ...


i still don't get how you can break your feet running ... it sounds INSANE. I can understand if you were playing a sport and there's cutting and quick turns involved, but RUNNING. you'd have to have extremely frail feet or naturally clumsy.

2/23/2009 9:24:58 PM

Quote :

"1) you'll get sand in your shoes and socks, leading to blisters, even if you mostly run in the packed sand"

not if you run barefoot. the sand falls right off.

Quote :

"2) if you run in the packed sand, you'll end up getting wet"

bare feet dry off quickly.

Quote :

"3) it throws off your sense of time and space. the horizons are all messed up - if you look down the beach, for example, and say "i'll just go to that building up there - it can't be more than 10 minutes away", you'll end up running 30 minutes before ever getting tot he building."

this is true, but i kinda like it. you end up running/walking a lot further than you think you are.

but amsterdam, take it easy at first if you start running barefoot. like ^^ said, our feet are conditioned for shoes, and it takes some time for us to build up the muscles that shoes didn't require us to use. take it easy at first and work your way into it

2/23/2009 9:28:44 PM

^^While I was working in a warehouse, two older ladies both suffered from broken feet from walking, just walking. I think it was a bone density issue with age, but walking on the hard concrete all day ended up putting them out with stress fractures. Some of this could have been attributed to the fact that they did (rarely) move some very heavy pallets (3-4k lbs) by the use of a pallet jacks and would have been putting some good force on their feet.

2/23/2009 9:28:55 PM

Well it was explained to me like this...

The reason I broke my foot the first time is because the terrain I was running on and because of my flat feet. I did have proper arch support because most soccer cleats don't have a very good arch support. We were running on the practice soccer field all the time that the football team had taken over that didn't give a shit about the field so it because very uneven very rough.

This happened at the end of the season after I had put a lot of stress on them, and one game I was running and it all of a sudden started hurting really bad, so I get off the field and talk to the trainer and he said I probably just strained a muscle in my arch and gives me an arch tape. Well it feels better for the rest of the game, but the next day it was killing me, that weekend was prom so I went to prom in high heels with a broken foot and was completely miserable (not just cause of my broken foot but my date). My trainer was still sure it was just a strained muscle.

Next soccer game he tapes it up again, I go to clear the ball and as soon as I kicked it I knew something wasn't right I couldn't put any weight on it anymore. Got an x ray and sure enough it was broken.

[Edited on February 23, 2009 at 9:37 PM. Reason : ]

2/23/2009 9:33:58 PM