If running 26.2 miles in a couple of hours seems daunting, imagine doing it barefoot.

Barefoot runners are still a tiny number of the more than 43,000 expected to race in the New York City Marathon on Sunday, but organizers say they have seen an increase in runners who are interested in the trend.

“I feel like I get asked at least weekly, if not more,” said Mary Wittenberg, chief executive of the New York Road Runners, which organizes the marathon and other races throughout the year.

Barefoot runners are not new to marathon courses  Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the marathon in bare feet at the 1960 Rome Olympics  but their ranks have grown in recent years, prompted in part by a bestselling book that promotes the practice and the arrival on the market of several lightweight, thin-soled shoes designed to mimic the feel of running barefoot. The Barefoot Runners Society, a national club for unshod runners, claims 1,345 members, nearly double the 680 members it had in November 2009, when it was founded.

“This barefooting thing isn’t new, but it is newly popular,” said David Willey, editor in chief of Runner’s World magazine, which published an article on the so-called minimalist shoes in its November issue. “The appeal of this is obvious, especially right now with where the economy is and the sort of macrotrends in the culture that are going back to simplicity. This feeds right into that.”