You spent too much on your shoes

I am by nature a researcher.  The advent of the internet has made it significantly easier.  When I was a kid I spent weeks comparing all brands of roller blades before spending my hard  earned lawn mowing money.

Now that I'm beginning to run a little more (sometimes a little less depending on the week), I'm trying to learn a little more.  One of the big things right now is the "fad" of  minimalism and natural running.  The premise is that modern running shoes, with all their  new cushions and technologies have not reduced injuries at all.  In fact, running  injuries have shot up over the last 30 years or so.  Not only that,  but  running in modern sneakers (the studies say) is much less efficient than barefoot and causes you to run "un-naturally."

I'm game.  Over the last few weeks I've tried to move to more of  a mid-forefoot run and  run more efficiently.  I've slowly increased mileage and I've been running with no socks and no footliner in Nike Frees.  I realize that they are still not close to barefoot but it's start.  This week I plan to head over to the local school's cross country course and do some  barefoot training on the grass. 

I'm not sure that I'm all gung-ho about the total barefoot thing.  But when I go to the gym I can't understand how people can thump, flop and bump on the treadmill with a heel-strike run.  It sounds terrible ( and painful on the shins).

I take everything in stride (pun intended), so I realized that the actual truth is somewhere in the middle of the extremes.  Nonetheless, there are more and more articles like this one coming out that are quite interesting.  Check it out and let me know what you think.......what have $200 shoes brought us??