It’ll depend on surface, your fitness, what shoe you are looking at. I don’t think this is a simple yes or no question.
Good running shoes are engineered to increase performance. You will definitely be slower without.
I imagine the surface matters a lot. Running on pavement? Shards of glass?
I know someone who tried to run a marathon barefoot and destroyed the soles of his feet.
Of course not. If this were the case marathoners would run barefoot. Also I would suggest if youre trying barefoot outdoors you not start by running a mile as it will probably mess up your usually shoed feet.
Olympic marathons have been won by barefoot runners. Abebe Bikila from Ethiopia did it in the 1960s Rome Olympics.
No. If running barefoot were faster then you would see lots of elite athletes competing barefoot. The ideal is wearing very light shoes (track spikes, racing flats) for protection, and developing good form so you aren’t landing on your heel with each stride.
Afaik, we actually don’t know, we have so many years of research and technique development of running with arched footwear than with archless and barefoot running, there’s no sufficient incentive to research and test it at full Sprint (heh) and thus research for it goes at a snail pace.
As a reference of how important this research is, nowadays there are banned running shoes you can’t use in competition because of the advantage they give you and they have to be previously be approved as opposed to individually banned. A new shoe can shave seconds off a professional runner’s time.
Nike actually makes a running shoe which used a carbon reinforced sole IIRC which is supposed to make you use a bit less energy when running. So I’ll put in my vote for no, you won’t be faster barefoot.
