Quote Originally Posted by Andrea View Post
I had been running for a few years in "motion control" shoes before I tried going barefoot. I'd gone to a local running shop, they watched me (and videotaped me!) on a treadmill and told me which shoes to get. Over a couple of years, I kept having different issues- IT band pain, patello-femoral tendonitis (went to a PT for that one), shin pain, and at one point, I went to a podiatrist because of a re-occurring bruise under my big toe. He gave me some temporary insoles and wanted me to try them before I came back for orthotics. The insoles made my feet hurt so badly after 1 run that I just had to stop running for several weeks. Then I got really hooked on cycling and didn't run for a year or more.
Actually, IT band issues were what finally made me try barefoot/VFF running--I had seen info about it before and was intrigued but afraid to try it, and then decided to give it a go when the ITB stuff was hard to keep under control. It has definitely helped (along with continuing to work on the muscle imbalance issues that contributed to the problem), although I have had one flare-up even in the VFFs (however, I knew my form was off at the time from having banged up the ball of my foot on a rock while trying to stay upright after tripping). It's amazing, though, how hard it is to keep up proper form throughout the whole run when you've gotten out of condition!