My Vibram Five Finger Shoe Site

It was bound to happen, but after 3 months my shoe developed holes in the top of the toes region.  I don’t know how they got there.  I don’t remember hitting or kicking anything.  I was worried that these holes would get bigger and bigger like a small chip in the windshield and eventually ruin my five fingers shoes.  So I took action.  While this is not the prettiest fix, it certainly worked.  I took some Plumber Goop, which you can get from Home Depot or Lowes and put a dab right into the hole.

I did a better job on the hole on the left.  The one on the right I put too much.  These pictures were taken about 3 months after I did the repair.  As you can see, the holes have not enlarged and my shoes are still full functional.  And honestly, I can redo it if I wanted, but I’m almost at one year on these shoes and it’s time for a new pair.

People ask me that when they see me at the gym with my five fingers shoes.  Because I don’t wear socks with them, they assume that all your foot sweat just oozes into the shoe.  Well, I guess it’s true.  I don’t think you can do anything to get pass that except wash them regularly or wear socks.

I learned this while in boxing class.  We use the same gloves everyday and they get sweaty and smelly.  However, what I do is that rub hand sanitizer on my hands and then put my hands into the gloves.  I also do this again at the very end of class.  My boxing gloves have never smelled.

So, with my shoes, I don’t use hand sanitizer, but I do use baby powder and I do put some into the shoe and shake it when I take them off.  It’s been working.

But even with all that, you have to wash them once in a while.  I just toss mine into the washer and air dry them.  They come out good as new!

If you wanted to go the sock route, I suggest getting the Injinji five finger socks.  But honestly, if your feet fit into them without socks, it will be real tight with these socks.  So if you plan to use socks, I would get a size larger than what Vibram suggests.

I read Tim Ferris’s blog about the Four Hour Workweek all the time, but for some reason I missed his post about these shoes.  One night around 2am I was doing some online work when my friend Bill IM’d me about these shoes that he was buying.  He sent me a link and I thought they were some goofy looking but also cool shoes.

That night Bill and I went looking for a Blue Camo pair size 42 and we found out that they were out of stock everywhere.  I happened to like the gray ones and while searching for his, I found a single pair in stock in my size.  After spending about an hour looking for shoes for Bill, I thought to myself, why not?  I paid $85 and I purchased a pair of the Vibram KSO shoes in Grey Palm color.

When I originally saw these shoes upclose I thought that they were a cooling looking novelty shoe. I thought that they would be different and just a casual shoe not really meant for any type of hard athletic exercise.