Ideally, I like to not wear anything on my feet at all, and running barefoot off road can be an absolute joy. Running off road barefoot in an area with nearly a metre of rain p.a. has drawbacks though. Mud is very slippery.
Obviously we didn't evolve with shoes on, but we didn't evolve in soggy Britain either.
Apart from the obvious difficulty of tracking (often foul smelling) mud into the house, mud is slippery stuff. Human feet don't grip particularly well when running barefoot on mud, as I've found several times.
Minimal shoes provide a bit more grip. The Vivobarefoot trail freaks do a pretty good job of this, and so do the Freet Leep I currently favour. The (very easy to obtain) Merrell Trail Gloves do a much less good job of it, but I think they're designed for much drier USA conditions.
What's in my mind is, is it even possible to have really good grip with minimal shoes? The extra thickness of decent gripping studs makes shoes at least 10mm high, which isn't really minimal, is it? Vivobarefoot off road soles have 4.5mm studs, and that's barely adequate for muddy conditions. Fell running shoes like Walshes & Inov8 are minimal, but nowhere near as minimal as barefoot shoes.
I'm contemplating getting Lancashire Sports Repairs to put their fell running sole on a pair of Trail Gloves, but I'm not sure how helpful it'd be. Maybe for the winter, when socks are a necessity for long runs and Freet/Vivobarefoot don't come in sizes big enough for me to get socks under them.
On the other hand, maybe I should just accept that good grip isn't possible barefoot or in minimal shoes, and slow down on the slippy bits.
