I'm unfamiliar with the rise and fall of the "born to run"/minimalist shoes era. Where can I learn about it.

It was a proper Mania for a couple years. Tech bros in San Francisco were starting blogs to chronicle their own barefoot marathon training, then quietly deleting them when their feet got torn up and they got stress fractures.

They all had foot injury and moved onto being BTS/Taylor Swift fans.

Minimalist shoe brands grew and were catching on. Not wanting to be left out, regular shoes brands started their halfassed attempts at minimal shoes. A bunch of people switched cold turkey from cushioned shoes to thin shoes without scaling back training/transitioning properly and got injured. Specifically people were injured in the foot and lower legs because those muscles aren't used as much in cushioned shoes and switching too quickly overloaded the muscles leading to issues. Many people got frustrated and went back to regular shoes.

While this killed the minimal shoes produced by the big brands, barefoot shoe brands like Xero and Vivobarefoot actually never stopped growing.

It was all hyped up BS, made around a very secret tribe which is well known for hundreds of years.

Everybody started running "barefoot" with these Tevas. People got injured and stopped running. I think there was a class action lawsuit as well.

People who didn't buy into that hype are still running.

End of story.

You got it. It took a few years but just about everyone who tried it (myself included) learned the hard way that it wasn't a magic bullet.

Abebe Bikila won the 1960 Olympic marathon running barefoot. He set a world best time. Minimalist.

It definitely left still current marks on the industry. Heel offsets used to be 1/2", 12+mm. Afterwards, offsets have settled substantially lower and there is a variety from 0mm to about 10mm. There is wider appreciation of foot shape shoes. It solves problems for some people. There was a huge "running in flats" thread here on LR years before Born to Run where people described how they benefited from minimalist shoes.

The movement was correct about advantages of barefoot. There is zero doubt someone who grew up barefoot running has stronger and less deformed feet than people who squeezed into too-tight shoes. However, that doesn't mean that most runners can easily transition to barefoot or are willing to make it work when their priority is just running vs barefoot running. It can take

Some will still find benefits to having a dose of barefoot/minimalism to their running. Barefoot strides on grass always feel awesome to me. Doing balance exercises barefoot feels good and strengthens the feet. Being barefoot or in socks or flip flops at home has been a lifetime good habit IMO.The get back-to-nature aspect of running, if you appreciate that rather than just how fast you run, also benefits.

Dumbest movement ever.

People who are lifetime shoe wearers have naturally weaker feet.

Most runners run most of their workouts on unnatural surfaces like tarmac or sidewalks.

This combination of factors did not make for many good candidates for barefoot running.h to

Very very very few people are biomechanically perfect enough mileage to run barefoot or in minimalist wear and do high mileage.

Born to Run is a fun and captivating read but I think the idea that you should just ditch your running shoes was a little misguided. The reason people get injured running isn't from running shoes per se, but poor form, muscle weaknesses, or doing too much. Running in minimalist shoes or barefoot can help some people by enforcing proper running form, but obviously the ground impact forces are going to be high and your feet are more likely to incur a lot more damage, which is obviously why the movement lost its steam. It would have been better but less exciting to promote learning proper form and biomechanics and strength exercises for running. I also find it funny that the take away from the book was this idea of "barefoot running." No one in the book was running barefoot except for Ted McDonald some of the time. Even the Tarahumara wore huaraches made from car tires.

I will say though that running in minimal shoes or barefoot still has its place, it's great every now and then for drills and exercises and helping to strengthen feet but it was never necessary to fully commit to running in minimal shoes 100% of the time. I used to run barefoot on the beach a lot when I lived nearby one and I think it benefitted me a lot and helped me get over this nagging issue in my left foot. But also the beach is about the safest place to run barefoot.

One lesser known side effect was that bare leg 🦵running was increasing runners’s diarrhea as there was nothing to hold the cacca inside.

Barefoot/minimalist running actually fixed a lot of people 's injuries by significantly strengthening the feet and lower legs. On the other hand, some people just ended up switching out one kind of injury for another.

I ran exclusively in minimalist shoes for about 5 years, but I ended up switching to performance trainers/racing flats because the fact was, at least for me, I just couldn't handle the distance and paces necessary for being a competitive road racer. There really is nothing so great as being incredibly strong, feeling the ground under your feet, and running through the woods on soft trails.

Nowadays, if I'm coming back from injury or a sabbatical, I ease my way into things by putting on super shoes and jumping on the treadmill. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

It was a flawed concept that sounded good but did not work in practice (running on pavement).

Then, Hoka happened (they started catching on in @2012).

Born To Run was the stupidest, most annoying running book I ever read all the way through. I started one by Dean Karnazes but had the good sense to quit reading...

Cumulated in my area with some people running trail races barefoot or in sandals over asphalt/grass/gravel/rocks/roots/dirt//streams/broken glass, etc. I don't see any folks doing that anymore. I was in a particularly muddy race where "running" sandals may have actually been a better choice, but otherwise the sandal/barefoot choice seemed dumb to me.

Do a LetsRun search with Trackhead as the poster

The minimalist era is now. More people are running barefoot/minimalist now than ever. There are more minimalist shoes available than ever. You can go on Amazon and search for "barefoot shoes" and have hundreds of choices. If you go on Strava you'll find lots of barefoot/minimal running groups. That wasn't a thing in 2010, even at the height of the so called barefoot running craze. It's mostly a matter of changing media focus.

In the next generations of runners, there will be kids who spent their early years wearing minimal shoes or encouraged to go barefoot more by their parents. They won't even know about the minimalist shoe movement because minimalist shoes are just one of a selection of normal shoes now, and some people prefer them when they have the choice. That wasn't the case before the 2010's. When I was growing up and learned about running there was no such thing as minimalist shoes. We were all taught that everyone needs big foamy shoes in order to run. That's why Born To Run was such a big revolutionary idea at the time. Now it's just part of our culture, but it's only been 14 years or so. So it's not really internalized yet.

The book was promoting bare foot running and also chia seeds. After I finished the book, I had no interest in minimalist foot wear, but I did integrate chia seeds into my diet. Eat them with yogurt, folks. Likely won’t improve your running (the author suggested that the tribesman had found some kind of secret ultra endurance fuel, ha ha), but they are a pretty good source of fiber, iron, magnesium, and protein.

Bikila wasn't a barefoot runner. He ran the race barefoot because his shoes broke down on a training run in Rome and he couldn't find a new pair that fitted.

The minimalist movement also made people start to pay attention to shoe weight. That used to be a complete non factor in trainers. My year 2004 US 9 Pegasus weighed around 12 ounces.