As a response to injuries he suffered from the repeated pounding of running, Scott Petry starting looking into shoe technology in hopes he’d stumble across better kicks that would, in turn, lead to painfree runs.

What he found surprised him.

“I was really researching better shoes to run in, and I came across some people who suggested running barefoot,” Petry said. “I thought they were crazy at the time.”

Eight months later, Petry is a convert.

The 41-year-old Petry runs barefoot. Three- to four-milers along the bike-and-hike trail. Red Dog’s Dog Days runs. Marathons. All barefoot, all the time.

“I know when I first started, a lot of the neighbors had to drive around to make sure I was really running barefoot,” Petry said. “Everybody at Red Dog’s is accustomed to me. I get some people who think it’s cool. Some people think I’m on some macho trip. Some think I’m crazy. But I think Lawrence is a pretty liberal town. Most people aren’t too judgmental if they see some guy trucking down the trafficway with bare feet.”

The logic behind barefootin’ isn’t so much science as natural selection.

The human foot is designed to run. Modern shoes – with their air here, gel there, foam elsewhere – are designed to insulate, support and protect the foot.

‘We’re made to run’

But barefoot proponents contend shoes tend to force the foot into unnatural motion. They also say shoes weaken the muscles that make feet work. A combination of unnatural motion and weak muscles can lead to injury.

“We’re made to run,” Petry said. “Our foot was engineered to run. As shoes are becoming more sophisticated with higher heels, they create a running style that causes injuries. With me, the heel is so large, you have to land on it. You do that, it jolts the knee and hips, which causes injuries.”

In Petry’s case, the result was iliotibial band syndrome. ITBS is an inflammation of the iliotibial band, a thick band of fibrous tissue that runs down the outside of the leg.

“I had it on both knees,” Petry said. “It prohibited me from running for more than about an hour. I’d have to stop. I went to a different shoe and it seemed to help, but it was still there. I had shin splints, soreness on the balls of my feet. I’d run on the track, and it still happened. I was pounding the pavement.”

Modern shoes, barefooters contend, lead to pavement pounding.

“Seriously, ‘jogging,’ the word itself, is a synonym for jarring or jolting or pounding,” said Ken Bob Saxton, a barefoot-running pioneer Petry refers to as the “godfather” of barefootin’. “I became interested in running back in the 1970s, so I remember experts warning people that jogging would tear their organs apart and all that.

“Jogging has nothing to do with how fast you are running. It has to do with a lazy stride, with letting your foot slam haphazardly into the ground. It’s a result of running with little awareness. As me and my fellow runners age, I’ve noticed that the jogger’s shoes are no longer as comfortable as they once were. The shoes which masked the pain of bad running technique never did protect runners from impact, only from the feeling of impact. So now the long-term damage of impact, to the knees, back, ankles, etc., are creeping up on these aging joggers.”

Beware of pebbles

But doesn’t going bare lead to pain all its own?

Of course it can, Petry warns, especially for newbies.

“When I first started running barefoot in January, I was very concerned about it,” he said. “My feet were extremely sensitive to anything on the road. It’s like being in a movie theater for two hours, then coming out into the bright light. Your feet are very sensitive. After a while, your feet become desensitized. You still feel rocks, but you watch where you’re going. Glass generally isn’t a problem. I’ve probably gotten one shard of glass. I just pulled it out. Most glass runs flat. You can run through it. I don’t try to run through it, but generally it’s not a problem. People ask about nails, but I’ve never seen any nails.

“Pebbles : once in a while, I’ll miss a pebble and it sticks in my foot. It’ll set you off. You need to pay attention.”

Curiously, Petry said the soles of his feet adapted to his barefootin’ faster than the rest of his feet.

“I’m the type of person that kind of jumps into things,” he said. “Everybody told me you have to start slow, that your foot has been supported by shoes your entire life, but I jumped in. My muscles were sore. The bottoms of my feet hadn’t developed their natural sole. They were very doughy and soft. I went out on a treadmill and ran a mile and a half. I wasn’t running correctly and tore up the bottom of my doughy feet.

“After that, I found some grass to run in so I could build up my muscles. The bottoms of your feet toughen up faster than the rest of your muscles. You skin seems to change a lot quicker. It’s the muscles you have to be concerned with.”

Petry’s sans-shoes running also forced him to alter his stride. Petry and Saxton both describe the barefooter’s motion as “falling forward,” and they caution against pushing off.

“You naturally land softer,” Petry said. “You don’t want to push off. When you push off, you have a tendency to cause friction between your foot and the cement, and that causes blisters. The recommendation is, you fall forward. It’s more effortless running. It takes awhile to change all that.”

After his initial headlong plunge into the barefooters’ realm, Petry pulled up and took a more gradual approach. He started off using a Nike Free, a minimalist shoe touted to offer the benefits of barefoot running with protection from the elements. Petry progressed to running in Aquasocks and finally the Vibram FiveFingers shoe, which looks like a glove for feet.

Now, Petry does all his running au natural.

Well, almost.

Petry, who plans to run the Kansas City Marathon this fall without footwear, competed in last weekend’s Crosstown Unity Run 10K.

Toward the end of the run was a gravel hill that gave Petry pause.

“I had to stop and put on coverings for my feet going up that hill,” he said. “It was pretty rocky. I’ve run up it barefooted before, but I think they added additional rocks to it. I had to pull off to the side and put on some Vibrams.”

That incident put a hitch in Petry’s nickname.

Members of the brotherhood, it seems, tend to adopt similar sobriquets.

Saxton, who runs the Web site runningbarefoot.org, is Barefoot Ken Bob. Another pioneer is Barefoot Ted. In Kansas City, there’s Barefoot Rick. You get the idea.

“After I ran my first official race, I declared myself Barefoot Scott,” Petry said. “But after the last race, I declared myself Semi-barefoot Scott.”

‘It’s a fringe thing’

There’s a palpable eccentricism to barefootin’ to which Petry and Saxton both admit.

“It’s a fringe thing,” Petry said, “but I’m not eccentric.”

Saxton is.

The bearded godfather of soles – who has completed dozens of marathons without shoes, including two in two days – seems to revel in it.

“Like the general population, there are a diversity of barefoot runners,” Saxton said. “Some, like myself, are quite eccentric.”

So does Saxton want to change to world? Will he not rest easy until everybody’s running sans footwear?

“I’m not really trying to convert people to running barefoot,” he said. “I’m just hoping they will enjoy reading about my experience, and perhaps a few will question and think about all the garbage we’ve been convinced that we need to buy in order to live ‘simply’ and ‘happily.'”

And Petry?

“I don’t think it’s for everybody,” he said. “People like their shoes. I know at first I didn’t think it was for me. I kept bouncing back and forth. I do think it’s a more natural way to run. A lot of people ask me about it. And I know a lot of people have signed up on (Saxton’s) Web site. But I also know there aren’t a lot of people signing up to go run with me.”