Abstract: Little is known about the temporospatial and performance effects after a transition-period to barefoot running. Of interest is whether effects are maintained once a runner puts their shoes back on. This study examined the before- and after-effect of transitioning to barefoot running on cadence, footstrike, running speed and comfort. Two-dimensional video and auditory data were collected from 30 recreational runners (16 male, aged 34.1 year [SD 8.9]) running in traditional shoes, minimalist shoes and barefoot at baseline and after they transitioned from a traditional shoe to barefoot running. From video, speed was quantified as m/s and footrike as ‘rearfoot’ or ‘not-rearfoot’. From audio, cadence quantified as steps/minute. Overall comfort of each footwear condition was rated on a 100 mm visual analogue scale (0 = not comfortable at all) and ranked between footwear conditions. Mixed linear models were fitted with time and footwear as main effects and the interaction footwear*time. Non-parametric tests were used to compare footstrike and comfort ranking. Post-transition to barefoot, runners exhibited increased cadence (3.68 steps/min (95% CI 1.42–5.93)) and overall comfort by 9.27 mm (5.5–13) across all footwear conditions. At baseline and post-transition, runners exhibited significantly higher cadence in barefoot than both footwear conditions. Traditional footwear was always ranked higher and rated as significantly more comfortable than barefoot (27.1 mm (17.8–36.5)). Immediate changes observed when running barefoot were maintained post-transition at 20 weeks, but runners reverted to their shoe-based running cadence, speed and footstrike when they put their shoes back on. Further, shod running remained more comfortable than barefoot running despite successfully transitioning.
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