Baregrips- first race

After recce-ing the Lantern Pike, I thought that it was easily grassy enough to get the baregrips out for a bit of angry racing.
A bonus of this one is also thats its only 1.4miles, an up and down beast on which its barely possible to get blisters, unless you have REALLY shocking shoes.

Main impression was on the way up, as expected, there was no support for my feet- under the soles that is. I could feel the muscles and lumbricals and tendons and ligaments working in my feel to stabilise it as I ran on a camber up the hill. Normally this stabilisation is taken care of quite happily with a solid base on the shoe. (this is also the case with the slightly "heavier" arrow soles on other inov8s.

The grip was brilliant, and the only reason for me falling over was putting my foot in a rabbit hole.

I'm still not going to wear these for longer races yet, and certainly not on anything that has extensive rocky paths- I suspect that will just lead to bruised feet.
Its also worth pointing out that I warmed my feet up thoroughly on a squidgy balancey ball thing before the run, to wake up my brain into recognising that my feet were there, and weren't just going to be shoved into a solid shoe and ran on. I think that proprioceptively "waking up" your feet is more important in this kind of shoe, and suspect that had I not done that, my feet would not be thanking me for the strain placed on them going up and down a hill with little or no support.

So, if you are thinking about getting Baregrips, or another type of barefoot running shoe, warm yer feet up before you head out there... we already know, but its worth saying again, if you arent used to them, they are quite likely to do you a mischief.