Benn Windlight

We really love hearing from fellow Freet Barefoot lovers about what they use their Freets for & why they love them. This campaign will look beyond what we have to say about our barefoot shoes, listening to and amplifying the voices of our cherished customers, and hearing about their interesting stories featuring their Freets! Our next story is with Benn Windlight, who is currently based in the Basque Country in Spain.

After almost 3 years of running only in sandals, I must confess, I was beginning to feel something of an air of superiority to people who ran in shoes. “Fools!” I thought. “Why wear those laced-up foot-prisons when you could instead let your feet breathe and run lighter with sandals, or with nothing at all?” There is certainly some truth in that question, especially if you’re living in Santa Cruz, California, like I was at the time, where the climate is about as mellow as it gets and the trails are nearly all easy dirt paths in redwood forests, which, at their worst, get a little moist when the rain comes.

Moving to the mountains of the Basque Country in Spain in September of last year, I quickly saw where my perspective was narrow; confronted with briars that ripped the skin off the tops of my feet, unavoidable long sections of calf-deep mud after a rain, and ridgelines littered with small pointy rocks, I knew that ditching the sandals for a proper pair of shoes would make my runs drastically more efficient and comfortable here.

My search led me to the Freet Feldoms, and I struck gold. They feel like magic slippers with a tire tread on the bottom. They’re just as light as my sandals were, and they don’t restrict my natural foot movement in any way. They’ve allowed me to go farther, longer, and faster in the bucolic foot-trails of Basque Mountains, with zero blisters ever and much less slipping in the mud. The only shoes I use now for running and hiking, my Feldoms carry more than a thousand kms on them and I see no signs that they can’t run with me for another thousand kms more.

I use my Freets for any kind of running or walking on any kind of path or pavement, but my preferred style is to go on long, relaxed runs over the dirt, stone, and grassy fields of the mountains.

My most recent journey in my Feldoms was a 3-day, 80-mile adventure from San Sebastián to Bilbao along the Camino de Santiago (you can read a bit more about it here, if you wish).

In a few months’ time, they will be my steed of choice for the Ehunmilak: a footrace in the Basque Country of over 100 miles and 10,000m of vertical ascent. Perhaps in summer days on easy trails, sandals will still have a place in my arsenal; but for this race, for all my training, and many other mountain dreams in between and beyond, the Feldoms are my trail companions of choice.