Erik is a barefoot runner from Brazil who recently contacted us on Twitter (@erikneves). He said that he had completed an Ironman in Brazil two weeks ago and just finished an Ultramarathon this past weekend. Not only that but he completed the Ultramarathon by doing one half of it barefoot and the other half wearing huaraches. Which got me wondering . . . What the heck is a Huarache?
A Huarache is some kind of Mexican running sandal. I searched several websites and there were a lot of links to different types of Huaraches, but I chose this website because I have a feeling that this is what our friend @erikneves was running in – http://www.invisibleshoe.com/. If you visit this website you will see that these sandals are super thin and supposedly are supposed to give you the experience of barefoot running while still protecting your feet.
I don’t know about you, but I tried running a marathon over a month ago and on a trip to San Juan Capistrano, I was walking around with sandals on and all my friends told me that it looked like my feet had cancer because they were covered in blood blisters from running in a marathon. I could not imagine running in those huaraches, let alone running half of an ultramarathon in them and the other have completely barefoot.
That’s crazy! But, now we know what a huarache is . . . and so do you.