Drop Dead Healthy

The Feet

The Quest to Run Right

I AM IN A CHAIN of sixty people, a sort of conga line without the Gloria Estefan music. Hands on one another’s shoulders, we are snaking our way through a park in Harlem.

About half of the human chain wears no shoes. Many other feet are encased snugly in red or yellow or black Vibram FiveFingers shoes—those gloves for the feet that my kids call “monkey shoes.” Others have fashioned their own footwear. Two college-age guys have taken flat rubber soles, attached leather straps, and entwined them gladiator-style around their calves.

I’m here at the meeting place for the first annual Barefoot Run in New York, led by the high priest of shoeless jogging, Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run.

We will soon set out across Manhattan, but first we are warming up by pattering around Marcus Garvey Park. The organizers have hired two guys in tracksuits to thump African drums to get us in the barefoot-running mood before we head downtown. Not that this herd of runners needs it, really. They are already converts.