Vibrams are rocking my world!

So, as I mentioned before I finally caved and ordered some Vibram Fivefingers.  I ordered them from an online retailer who said they would be shipped in mid-June.  Then I checked the website while I was in Louisville (I mean cmon it's mid-June, where on earth are my vibrams?? I want them!!) ... and I discovered that they changed them from "shipping mid-June" to "shipping mid-July."  I call them and they're all "yeah, we can't help it, Vibram doesn't give us any information blah blah."

This is, of course, unsatisfactory.  I can't possibly wait any longer than RIGHT NOW.  Haha.

So out of the blue it occurs to me that maybe there are retailers in Louisville, and I have my car.  I called around and found them at several places.  The place that had the red color I wanted didn't have my size, but one place had black ones and another place had slate/lichen.  So I took a drive (bonus: also got to see more of Louisville) and ended up picking up a pair!!

(I swear to god I don't have cankles...every photo I took makes it seem so, though.)  

So I'm just going to cancel the online order.  

I took them out for the first run tonight.  With these you're supposed to start really really small, like half a mile,  because they cause you to use a lot of new foot/ankle/calf muscles.  I've decided that until I can use them for longer distances I'm going to do all Vibram runs without the Garmin, just taking my tiny sports watch and running based on time.  I think some low-tech runs will be good for morale, so I can just RUN and not think about pace and distance and heart rate and all that.  Vibram runs will be in addition to the regular training plan, since they're just short little baby runs for the foreseeable future.

This was possibly the best run I've ever had.  No joke.  It felt SO GOOD.  You can feel the ground while running!  And I could feel all these different muscles in my calves doing work, and my hamstrings.  It makes you be a forefoot striker, so now I know how that's supposed to feel (and it feels awesome).  I was planning to run for just 5 minutes tonight in them, but when I looked at my watch I was already at 4 minutes and hadn't turned around, so I ended up doing closer to 10 minutes.  It's going to be very very easy for me to overtrain while wearing these because it's the most joyous amazing delightful experience in the whole entire world.  Your feet make this teeny-tiny little "tap tap" sound, and you feel really light on your feet.  I've never been happier on a run.  My knees and ankles and hip didn't hurt at all, as they often do when I start a run--(that takes-awhile-to-warm-up feeling never happened while wearing these).

This was the best purchase ever and I wish I'd gotten some long ago.  I hope the leg-strengthening process goes smoothly and that I can transition into doing some longer runs in these instead of shoes.

Happy feet!  I want to go run more RIGHT NOW!  Damn this slow muscle-building process...hehe.