So what about this new Vibram debunking? I say: Pshaw. What I reported when I first tried them is what I still think now. If you already run in the way these shoes favor, or if you're able to shift your gait to a "forefoot-strike" style, they're great. And if not, not.

For instance, a (fair-minded) Washington Post writer noted:

I tried the FiveFingers in 2009 and knew within a quarter mile that they were not for me. Yes, they forced me up onto the balls of my feet, where running coaches want you, because smacking your heels on asphalt roads without any padding to protect them will [make you] do that....

Running that way didn't make sense for the writer. For me, it was the way I'd always run—in part because the primitive, unpadded shoes available in the 1960s, when I started, strongly discouraged any runner from landing on the heels. So the shoes were—are—right for some people, including me, and wrong for others. It's a big world.

What the shoes are not, is "bullshit," which was the churlish judgment of the proudly "data-driven" (and generally admirable) but in this case snarkily hyperbolic Vox, with this headline:

If they're wrong for you, then wear something else! For its part, Vibram shouldn't claim they're right for everybody. And—such are the wonders of our legal system—if people actually bought these shoes for promised health benefits, then perhaps it's fair for them to get their $94-per-pair back. (What does this augur for the Belly Burner Weight Loss Belt? Or for Axe? You mean, thousands of bikinied women are not going to mass around any man who buys a can? Zounds!)

But Vibram shoes are right for some people, and bullshit they are not. I would send a picture of my current pair, here with me in Mississippi, but they are too battered and use-worn, most recently today, to be presentable.

Update: Thanks to those who pointed out that The Wire, which is affiliated with the Atlantic, had a microscopically-less-snarky report on the finger-shoes controversy. Eg, "In the event that you had a temporary lapse of judgement and bought these heinous toe shoes, you can get your money back (just not your dignity.)" Again, if you're a heel-strike runner, as many people who learned in the era of fatly padded shoes are destined to be, these are not the footwear for you. But for people who run the way these shoes are designed for, or can learn, they're neither bullshit nor heinous but very good.

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