My FiveFingers – Vibram, FiveFingers, Toe Shoes, Minimalist Shoes

As a kid growing up in the woods, I fantasized about being a warrior princess: a powerful girl trained in the arts of survival and war, who could stalk soundlessly through the brush and skillfully ambush prey. I wanted to live in a house made of earth, fish in the river with a spear, wear [...]

I recently came back from the top of the world–or the top of the Lower 48, at least–Mount Rainier. The experience was so amazing that I must now amend my previous belief that the only footwear one would ever need was a pair of Fivefingers: I now need Fivefingers and a pair of crampon-compatible double [...]

A word of advice, because here on the VFF blog we’re all about offering advice: when you’ve given up your running training regimen because you’ve decided to take that gigantic piece of time you spend pounding (or in the case of VFFs, gliding) the pavement and you instead use that time to do CrossFit/yoga/meditation/writing/climbing/backpacking/cycling/sleeping, don’t [...]

The uniform for doing the Lindyhop on a social dance floor is a polka-dot dress, a pair of leggings, and a pair of white suede-soled Keds. I showed up in cuffed chinos and Performa Janes. I went swing dancing for the first time since middle school gym class, and while a lot of people worried [...]

There’s something really amazing about Olympic lifting, in that it gives you an opportunity to show yourself what you’re capable of. I would never have picked up weights if it weren’t for having a boyfriend as a trainer. It was something that never, ever interested me. I was more into yoga, running, kayaking, rock climbing; [...]

I ride my bike almost everywhere. I had a car when I first moved out here to Tucson, a run-down jalopy that took me across the country half a dozen times. That car was good to me. I was not so good to it. I was broke for one, and knew nothing about standard car [...]

Rehabilitation was today’s theme at work. All day long, it seemed, people were looking to Fivefingers as a way to fix something going on with them. It started with me offering advice to a guy who was trying on Fivefingers to add to his new fitness regimen: he was doing P-90X at home and wanted [...]

These certainly aren’t brand spankin’ new, but has anyone checked out the Smartwool Classics? My two favorite companies have combined forces to make this cozy, comfortable shoe: a Classic sole with a Smartwool ballerina-cut toe sock inside. I haven’t had them long enough to start destroying them yet, but they’ve done something really smart to [...]

My feet are not terribly well-behaved.  A coworker who’s a really talented boot fitter was somewhat amazed at how mobile my feet are and how much they pronate–meaning that when they’re holding up the rest of me, my arches flatten a lot and my ankles sink in.  My talented coworker recommended some very supportive insoles [...]

It was with great trepidation and a lot of whining that I let myself be hauled into a car and driven along long snow-banked country roads to Cove Hollow to run.  My brother wanted to go for a mountain bike ride, and while I didn’t pack my bike into my luggage to visit my parents [...]