However, from that moment on, in a brief period of time I stumbled upon many articles about minimalist running shoes. Here are just a few: the 4 hour week, Mail Online, CrunchGear, Wired, the Daily Show, and even TIME magazine named these shoes one of the best inventions of 2007.

Here’s a short interview that took place last August 18th on the Daily Show. They talk abut people from a Mexican tribe who run hundreds of miles barefoot and despite such achievement, they do it without injuries:

Such a buzz certainly caught my attention and made me think. The truth is that, as a kid, I used to walk barefoot all the time, and loved it; but that was a long time ago… so I’d rather hear from Vibram owners. Fortunately, these shoes are available at Amazon, where a few buyers commented on them (all of them positive).

I noticed most owners are initially reticent (like me); running injuries, pain or just curiosity leads them to buy into this new barefoot trend; after an initial adaptation period, they simply love their Vibrams. I was so intrigued that I decided to join the FiveFingers club; After a quick visit to the official website (http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/), I learnt they were available in the Sports Chalet from Huntington Beach. After all, there’s no way I am buying something like this without physically testing them first. A couple of hours later, there I was, with my brand new “shoes”…

So here’s my take on them… I’ll admit at the beginning they feel kind of funny, and most of the time, you can definitely see people staring at them. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, since they are certainly noticeable; but who cares!?
The attention is granted, but reactions are diverse; some people simply find them horrible (my roommate started laughing when he saw them for the first time), while some others think they are cool and inquire about their name or where I got them. “Are they some kind of water shoes?“, “Are they for climbing?“, “They look comfortable, are they?“. Even my girlfriend hates them; although with a little bit of luck, I might be able to convert her .

Somewhere online a guy was comparing them to the feeling of wearing gloves instead of mittens; it sounded funny but now I actually think it’s a pretty accurate comparison. When you walk, you can actually feel the ground, which turns out to be a nice feeling. Try to think of it as when you walk barefoot in the beach; isn’t it pleasant to feel the sand on your soles? Obviously, asphalt or concrete is not the same thing, but you get the idea.

As soon as you put them on and try to walk, you’ll realize you cannot land with the heel first (as we are used to do), so you try to use the balls of your feet; kind of like walking on the tips of your toes. It feels a little bit unnatural at first since you tend to overdo it. However, after a bit of practice, the feet will land almost flat on the ground; it just happens that the front does it a fraction of a second earlier.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I read some people were concerned about them smelling. The truth is they are quite open so your feet don’t feel that hot. I already washed mine a couple of times, but it was not due to the smell (and I live in hot Southern California); I just wanted them to recover that bright shiny red color
Probably, a cold weather would be a bigger inconvenience for this type of open shoes; I guess that’s why Vibram created the KSO and other models which cover the whole foot and offer more protection.

I’d like to emphasize there is an adaptation period (which is clearly stated in the box). Don’t expect your feet and leg to be comfortable with them right away. If you haven’t used your feet muscles properly in a long time, don’t expect them to strengthen overnight. At first, your calves and feet arches will feel sore for a few days, but a couple of weeks later the transition should be complete; that is why, the more you wear them, the more comfortable they feel. At this point, I own them for over a month and I use them as often as I can. I tried running with them but I haven’t gone over 2 miles yet. Even running with regular shoes, I can feel my stride is different than it used to be. I ran over different surface types and so far I only had a problem with loose gravel on top of a hard surface such as concrete. Although I still don’t know whether my feet should get tougher or it’s simply not the appropriate surface.

My main concerns are regarding their durability. Not that I encountered any problems so far, but being made just of a thin rubber sole and some elastic cloth on top, they might give up on me sooner than I’d like. Another worry I have, is the lack of protection for the feet; I wear them regularly to the gym and I could see how some unfortunate accident could be fatal for my toes.

The bottom line is I’m really happy with them; so I guess I’m just like most other Vibram owners I had previously read about . If you have doubts, I’d definitely encourage you to give them a try.

Isn’t it ironic how much we are moving forward only to realize some things we just did better in the past…?

Here are some pictures from some of the most fervorous soccer supporters:

On another note, and actually talking about soccer this time the outcome was quite different and Spain did actually perform up to the challenge. Game after game they showed their best game which led them to the final against Germany and ultimately to being the European champions after more than 40 years. Celebrations went on in Spain for many days and the local media argued that the country was finally united. However, as the BBC says,

…one trophy does not a unified nation make, and Mr Zapatero was perhaps overstating the point.

I couldn’t agree more. By the way, I grabbed most pictures surfing around, so they belong to their respective owners.

Maybe that’s why I’d like to try something new; shake things up a little bit nothing big, just small steps at a time. This is how I came up with the idea of signing up for new activities. I go regularly to the gym, but all I do is weight lifting and running, and it never crossed my mind to sign up for other classes such as fencing, dodgeball or maybe even aerobic. After taking a look at the classes offered I decided for yoga. It always attracted my attention but I wanted a demanding activity and I didn’t know whether it yoga was too soft.

However, it turns out yoga is much more than a simple physical activity. As we can read in the wikipedia “Yoga is one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, focusing on meditation as a path to self-knowledge and liberation.”

On my first class, I didn’t know what to expect, but as people were arriving I soon realized that there were easily more than 30 girls and only about 3, 4 guys. That’s not my typical scenario: being an engineer, the lectures I attend have the opposite guys-girls ratio; so it was a nice change to begin with .

As I said before, I didn’t know about the physical requirements of the activity, yet it turned out that half way through the class I was already sweating, so it was a nice workout and at the same time it was a very good relaxation technique. Even more, the next day all my muscles (specially the legs) were quite sore.

So far, it has only been two sessions, but I am quite satisfied with the change. From now on, I may try new stuff more often!

Sorry about the silence from my side ; since Christmas I haven’t been around much although I’ve consistently been in front of my computer for more than 5 hours a day for sure. In the beginning I had to adjust back to Irvine coming again from Barcelona and then it soon got busy. But here I am again! The spring break is over, we have a new quarter and I finally have some free time .

Don’t feel sorry for me though, cause during the winter quarter I got to do stuff too… et me tell you about the time when we went to the Staples Center. I love sports in general, but back in Barcelona, I played in a basketball team since I was quite young and till college. So I love the game. In many occasions I used to stay late until 3 in the morning (due to the time zone difference) to watch NBA playoffs games. I particularly remember the Lakers vs Sacramento Kings series. It had to be great to be in the Staples center in one of those defining moments when Horry scored a 3 pointer for the victory in the last second.

So, me and some friends bought tickets and went to see a Clippers vs Grizzlies game. Yes, I know they are last! This is a crappy match, but tickets are cheaper and Pau Gasol plays in Memphis, so it works for us. Actually, the game itself was boring and I think we were the only ones supporting Memphis. But I got the Staples feeling . what a great pavilion! In Spain we don’t spend that kind of money in basketball. I’d like to come back to a real basketball game when I can allow to spend a hundred bucks in tickets.

After the game, we went for a walk for downtown LA, and guess what… they were shooting a Jackie Chan movie right there. There were more than 20 police cars alone in the scene, so you can imagine what type of it was… I think it was for Rush Hour 4. I’ll definitely watch it when it to comes out. These things only happen in America…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I started thinking about this, the other day, when I and Marcel attended the Home Opener game of the UCI basketball team in the Bren Events Center. It was a nice game. They played against South Carolina and it was a disputed match with no clear winner until the end. I was really impressed with the whole thing. The price of the event is 15$ which many people pay despite being “only” a university game. For students, the entrance is free though. From what I saw, people really support UCI, and as the speaker said, we were more than 2000 people there. Not only that, but they were also giving away free Completely Insane Anteaters t-shirts for all students.

This was the first game we attended, and we did so, just to see what was going on, but I have to admit that as soon as we arrived, we got linked into the feeling and started supporting out team. Needless to say, we enjoyed it very much. From what I saw people really love UCI. It’s all about the anteaters!

I’ve been playing basketball in Spain for more than 10 years, and never saw anything close to what I saw in the Brent events center. The pavilion was great, they played with 3 referees, there was a band, cheerleaders, a speaker, etc. To me, it looked more like a professional game than a college competition. In Spain, there are professional teams in the top division (known as ACB, which after NBA is probably the best one in the world) which do not have those kind of resources nor support. It made me thing about the differences between both countries…

Click here to view the embedded video.

By the way, in case you were wondering UCI won that match.

With such resources, it is no wonder why people are so fit. As I see it, when you’re at home doing nothing, you can always go hang out in the ARC and play something. At least that’s what I do! Besides that, every quarter several leagues and tournaments are organized in many different sports. This is how we entered the indoor soccer intramural competition. In Spain, Soccer is the main sport; I guess it would be something like football in USA. Since it is the most practiced sport, I would say people are generally not bad at all, especially when compared to people from other countries where soccer isn’t that popular.

So, we joined this internal UCI league. The matches take place once a week during the whole quarter, and then the best teams make it to the playoffs. The game is short but intense. Since our team consisted exclusively of catalan people, we came up with the original name. The Catalan Guys. Yes, I have to admit we are not that bright… The thing is though, that with a name like this, you feel more like a national team representing your country It is a very diverse team though; all of us are UCI (ex)students ranging from 22 years old to more than thirty in some cases. The fact is that despite the diversity, we managed to create a nice team. It turns out, we did quite good throughout the competition. We won every single game during the regular season (you can read short summaries in here –they’re in Spanish though-). Since we already played against all teams during regular season we got the chance to see all of our future rivals, and the truth is we beat all of them.

I have to admit we were probably overconfident and already saw ourselves as champions. I mean, who wouldn’t after a perfect season. But then, when the first serious match came, one of out best players Marc (see video) had finished his master degree in UCI and went back to Barcelona. We should have taken that as a bad sign; we didn’t. And as you can imagine we lost the first playoff game and were out of the competition. It kind of reminded me of what happens to the Spanish national team in every world cup

Click here to view the embedded video.

From my side, despite the loss, I am just happy to be part of a team again. I love sports, and being able to play again after my knee surgery and my back problems is just all I needed. Anyway, the next quarter the championship will be ours, so, watch out for the Catalan Guys!