So much of the stuff I read online about minimalist running is trash. Let’s get a couple of things straight to start with: Minimalist shoes are not barefoot, they’re shoes. Vibram Five Fingers aren’t the only minimalist shoes and they aren’t necessarily the best, either.

Okay, what’s got my goat then? Well this article, Why barefoot isn’t best for most runners, didn’t help. It was unscientific, biased and the title is very misleading. Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to berate the author by minutes. It seems they have a one week cutoff for comments. I managed to reply to a comment then had my comment on the article refused at about a quarter past one (the article was written at 13:13), so you’ll have to put up with my rant here instead.

Apart from the incongruity of the title, it assumes that all minimalist shoes are VFFs. Of course they aren’t. Aside from the specialist suppliers such as Vibram and Vivobarefoot most of the major manufacturers now have an offering of some sort or other. Even Nike, denounced by Chris McDougall (who, nevertheless, wears Nikes) in his book Born to Run, have a half-hearted effort in the Free range.

Then there’s that study. Take 36 experienced runners who have probably spent years finding the shoes they’re most comfortable in and training in them. Split them into two groups – yep a control group will make the results of the study indisputable – and give one group a pair of VFFs each. At least they followed the guidelines on Vibram’s website. Now there is a big problem here: Everybody’s footshape is different but every VFF has the same footshape. Unless you have the exact shape of foot that will fit the shoe, you’re going to run into all sorts of problems such as scrunched toes, strangled toes and toes that are encouraged to go places where they don’t want to go, as well as toes that are left out altogether. Don’t get me wrong, I like the quirkiness of VFFs but they don’t fit me so I don’t wear them. I have doubts about the individual toe pockets too – they reduce the flexibility of the toes introducing restriction – surely the opposite of the minimalist ethos.

The correct way to do the study would have been to use a random sample of runners of varying experience using a selection of different shoes – I bet the control group weren’t all wearing the same shoes. Trying to make sense out of their study and results, however, we can conclude that VFFs are more than likely to injure you. Sorry Vibram, there I go again.

I have only read an abstract of the research paper as I’m not prepared to pay $49 for the full (digital) version. Yep, you don’t even get the paper thrown in. I can only assume that Michael Crawley, the author of the article in The Guardian didn’t pay either and, what’s more, lost interest before he reached the conclusion: “Runners interested in transitioning to minimalist running shoes, such as Vibram FiveFingers, should transition very slowly and gradually to avoid potential stress injury in the foot.”

Moving on, then, Runner’s World’s The Best Minimalist Shoes. Okay, the article was written in 2011 but even way back then there was more choice than Vivos and VFFs, so why only review shoes that clearly aren’t minimal (other than the two mentioned)? Even the Mizuno Wave 3 has a heel height of 16.8mm. Minimal compared to, say, the Brooks Green Silence at 31.1mm (also reviewed in the article, but certainly not minimalist.

Okay, I’ve even bored myself with the rant now and it’s a long post with no pictures so I’ll leave it there.

Coming soon, I’ve just run my first half marathon in Vivobarefoot shoes and have now clocked up a year of running in them exclusively, so I’ll be reviewing the shoes I use…