What's in the shoes?

Last week I was listening to NPR and heard an interview with Christopher McDougall, the author of Born to Run.

The book illustrates McDougall’s quest to answer the question, ‘Why does my foot hurt?’ and the interview was centered on the same topic. One of the main reasons the author found was problems with running shoes — he says we should run barefoot.

It seems to me that running shoe companies have grabbed onto this notion and ran with it. All types of new shoe models have been released lately to accomodate this new outlook, most notably the five-finger gorilla-foot-looking shoe.

These shoes are meant to give the toes more room to spread out and for the foot to do what it would do naturally without the restrictions of the contraptions we usually lace up with.

I don’t know about you, but I like my old running shoes. So the new innovations lead me to ask…

Is this a fad that is catching on?

Are runners switching from the old running shoes to this new model by the masses?

Is running barefoot, or essentially that way, the next big thing revolution in the world of running?