BF Ultrarunners. What shoes do you use?

As much as I would like to complete an Ultra distance BF, it's just not going to happen with my current goals and plans. Because of some PF problems and the distances I wanted to do, combined with trail conditions, I went back to shoes. I have been barefoot running for almost 3 years, with year 2 about 95% barefoot. Just had to face the facts that I was limited being barefoot and had reached a distance plateau. Everyone is different, so I hope you have more success with your BF distances.

I currently use New Balance MT110s for most of my trail runs and I have Altra Lone Peaks for extremely rugged conditions. Unshoes sandals for shorter, less technical terrain. I had my first sandal Ultra distance of 50k two weeks ago, but it was a flat road. Rough chip seal had my soles very sensitive, I could not have gone further, but I was happy about completing a "minimal" Ultra.

That all depends on the course. I did my only ultra thus far (50 mile) completely barefoot with no significant issues. Of course I wasn't the fastest person out there..

None, I haven't worn running shoes in over eight years. I do most of my running on the roads though.

my first 50k trail last week-end with my "luna sandals leadville pacer", with socks because of the cold weather
never thought about my shoes during the whole race, good
I wish one day I could do the same race barefoot, but 8 months of barefooting of course are not enough (never ran more than a road half marathon so far)

rickwhitelaw said:

As much as I would like to complete an Ultra distance BF, it's just not going to happen with my current goals and plans. Because of some PF problems and the distances I wanted to do, combined with trail conditions, I went back to shoes. I have been barefoot running for almost 3 years, with year 2 about 95% barefoot. Just had to face the facts that I was limited being barefoot and had reached a distance plateau. Everyone is different, so I hope you have more success with your BF distances.

I currently use New Balance MT110s for most of my trail runs and I have Altra Lone Peaks for extremely rugged conditions. Unshoes sandals for shorter, less technical terrain. I had my first sandal Ultra distance of 50k two weeks ago, but it was a flat road. Rough chip seal had my soles very sensitive, I could not have gone further, but I was happy about completing a "minimal" Ultra.

Click to expand...

If Rick cant run on it bare foot my guess is 99.7 percent of the planet will not be able to do it. Ricks feet are tough as nails

Thanks rik, but you must have me confused with the great Rick Roeber.

I would say that I have decent foot conditioning. Some days I'm bombproof and others I'm a big wimp. With my luck, I would attempt an ultra on a wimpy day.

Late to the party... but there are a lot of good options out there now!

I run with no padding. Really happy that way and haven't had foot problems despite running on really technical terrain most of the time.

My absolute favorite are the Breatho and Neo Trails by VivoBarefoot. Those have a lot of traction and a really wide toebox. The ankle hole is so big that I always think they'll get sucked off by mud, but they don't..... I ran up in the White Mountains with these, and they gave me much better traction than my friends who were wearing Inov-8. The only (and significant) downside to these is that you can feel the lugs through the shoe if you take them on the road or on hard-packed surfaces.

Merrell makes some good products.

I've also run a couple of ultras in huaraches - both the Invisible shoes (Xero now) and Luna Sandals. Love the huaraches but they don't perform well in wet conditions or on technical terrain, and they are REALLY bad on wet technical terrain.