Bare essentials

Mike Sciacca

Ken Saxton has found a way to stand out in a crowd.

Not just any crowd -- a marathon.

Proving that no terrain is too tough, no surface too slick, the

Huntington Beach resident has accomplished what you might call a

“feet of strength,” on more than one occasion.

On March 7, Saxton will run the L.A. Marathon the way he runs

every other marathon -- barefoot.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Probably the most important aspect of running barefoot is that I

can feel the ground beneath my feet,” the 48-year-old said. “It’s

more comfortable for me. That first marathon I ever ran was my most

painful and I had my slowest time ever.”

That run came in 1987, and Saxton wore shoes.

He hasn’t worn a pair to run -- or, for much of anything else --

since.

“I had blisters from running that marathon in shoes,” he said. “I

had to walk most of the last five mile or so, because my feet hurt so

much from the blisters caused by my shoes. After that, I started

doing all my running barefoot.”

He took an 11-year hiatus from running marathons, then ran his

next one in 1998.

After marrying Cathy Lee in 1990 -- both in bare feet during a

ceremony at Crystal Cove State Beach -- Saxton sold his car. The move

motivated him to bike and run -- an eight-mile trek one-way -- to

work at Cal State Long Beach, where he is an information technology

consultant in the Department of Computer Engineering and Computer

Sciences.

He even is barefoot on campus, he said. His shoes, a pair of

sandals, sit “collecting dust” on his desk.

“I’m the guy who runs with the barefoot guy,” said Al Valdez of

Anaheim, who, unlike Saxton, opts to wear running shoes. “We’ve

trained off-and-on together for the past seven years now. I’d say

he’s the closest thing I have to a training partner.”

Valdez, who did a 17-mile run along the bike trail in Huntington

Beach with Saxton during a light rain on Sunday, says he first met

Saxton at an all-terrain trail run in Huntington Central Park.

“To be honest, he tried to recruit me for a barefoot race one

year,” Valdez said. “I tried to train up for it, but it wasn’t for

me.

“For Ken, he lives that way. He’s barefoot all the time. He’s an

easy guy to like, a beloved campus eccentric at Long Beach State and

a fixture in Huntington Beach.”

Around Surf City, where he trains, and on the marathon circuit,

Saxton’s gained the obvious nicknames: “the barefoot guy,” “barefoot

running man,” and “barefoot Ken.”

“It’s definitely brought me some attention,” Saxton said of his

barefoot lifestyle. “Al and I have this running joke that he’s faster

than me, but he doesn’t get that much attention as I do.”

If running barefoot wasn’t enough, you will be able to pick Saxton

out from the L.A. Marathon crowd wearing what he calls his “crazy

cap,” a multicolored hat with a propeller on its top.

“It aids me in my runs,” Saxton said.

Saxton averages seven marathons per year, among them the Pacific

Shoreline Marathon in Huntington Beach.

Saxton and his wife, Cathy Lee, who is deaf, will run the L.A.

Marathon on March 7.

The two first ran the marathon together in 2000 -- the same year,

Saxton said, he went the “entire year without shoes,” save for a

plane trip to Portland.

“I’m aiming to run one marathon per month this year,” he said.

“What I think is most interesting, is that that first marathon, I was

about 32 years old, pretty much the typical marathon runner’s prime.

“Eleven years later, at age 43, I was not only running marathons

with less pain but at a faster pace. I had also improved my 10k times

from the lower to mid-40-minute range, to the upper-30-minute range,

with a personal record time of 37:02 in 1999.”

One question Saxton says people continually ask, is to see the

bottoms of his feet. Other than having to occasionally remove a shard

of glass or thorn on one of his runs, he has not suffered a serious

foot injury since he began running barefoot.

“People are surprised that the bottoms are soft, like a glove, and

not calloused,” said Saxton, who said he only owns three pairs of

shoes.

“So few people in the United States actually learn to run well,”

he added. “Not only do their feet suffer as a result, but also their

knees, back and particularly every joint in their body. The one

certain thing shoes do when we run, is allow us to run with less

awareness that we are slamming our feet ‘blindly’ into the pavement.

“People often ask me if the impact while running barefoot is

worse, but people who I run past, rarely ask that, because they can’t

hear my feet landing on the ground as I approach.”

* MIKE SCIACCA covers sports and features. He can be reached at

(714) 965-7171 or by e-mail at michael.sciacca@latimes.com.