If you want to take the shoeless plunge, but you don't want to risk the injuries common to barefoot newbies, where do you start?
That's where Merrell's Barefoot Pace Glove shoes slot in – they're designed to strengthen your feet, arches and calves, training you to reshape your form with the end goal of running barefoot. The shoes even come with a free companion app for the iPhone and iPod called, appropriately enough, Go Barefoot. By following the regimen outlined in the app, Merrell's shoes are supposed to take you from a regular runner to a barefoot Brahmin in about 40 days.
The key to adopting a barefoot running technique is training yourself to land on your forefoot instead of your heel. This improves your stride, and it prevents painful injury; especially with the slim 1-mm shock-absorption plate and a zero-drop from heel to toe these Merrell shoes provide, landing on your heel is not an option.
The app reinforces this by having you run at a cadence of 180 foot-strikes per minute. This fast cadence forces you to shorten your stride, which helps eliminate the tendency to land on your heel instead of the ball of your foot. You can use a metronome or a song with a tempo of 180 beats per minute. Merrell happens to have its own eclectic playlist of 180-bpm songs available on iTunes for the steep price of $66.51 – I used the metronome.
When I first put the shoe on, I was pleasantly surprised at how snugly it could be laced so that my narrow heel and foot weren't sliding around. The shoe has a wide toe box, but it still fit like a glove. The weight (for the women's version) is 4.7 ounces per shoe, which is so light that they don't have any discernible heaviness when you slip into them. Rubber lugs project out of the sole at the tip of the toe. While this is useful in maintaining traction on the trails – and bear in mind this is a trail shoe – when I ran with them on concrete, there was a dragging sensation. It was especially noticeable when I was jumping over curbs.
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