You have learned 'foot braille'. When you and everyone else runs a marathon the surface of the course has been given foot braille dots so as to read, as you progress, the 20 favourite books, as voted for by the competitors, in foot braille. It's dense velvet or perhaps some sort of GM moss. As you run the course you read with your feet. Now, some might like 'I am not worthy' religious texts. Some might hobble along grinning at a bit of Vonnnegut. Some might like to swerve from the outside to the inside lane on a corner: Hemmingway, puff, puff, Tolstoy, pufff, cough, Atkins, cough, belch, Salinger, puff, sheesh... and so on. At the end everyone would have an odd tale. I know - people step on diffferent bits. Each new sentence would be colour coded so you knew where to step. It would require thousands of lanes, a great deal of study and practice, extreme fitness, a huge budget and probably knee pads. Hence Halfbaked.
-- weedy, Apr 16 2005

Nice. For those not quite up to a marathon, what about using as an excercise incentive? Say, a treadmill that plays back e-books in foot braille.. or the closed captioning from the TV in front of you at the gym.
-- SpookyFish, Apr 17 2005


Too much variation in stride length between individuals would limit the practicality of this to a form of practice that is custom designed for individual use. In my deconditioned case, the braille type would probably just press my roaring heartrate into my backside. For me to read any more than that would require too much concentration.
-- reensure, Apr 17 2005


Who knows where your foot will land? You just might never know exactly what Annie did with that gun, and you would be tormented by it forever, leading to an early death by fishbone.
-- disbomber, Apr 17 2005


You could always take up Evelyn Wood's speed walking.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 17 2005


do you ever flip back a page to re-read it?
-- po, Apr 17 2005


bet you a fiver that the pun came first!
-- po, Apr 17 2005


[disbomber] Annie got her gun.
-- FarmerJohn, Apr 17 2005


Oh, very good (po). Actually I hadn't noticed the pun. But I was very drunk.
-- weedy, Apr 17 2005


o.k. owe you a fiver!

congrats to Paula!
-- po, Apr 17 2005


How about a multi cantilever system in your shoes that can be programmed to run braille along your feet, telling you stories all the while. You can just sit there at dinner, and she thinks your listening as you smile and nod, all the while carried away with 'Frankenstein'.
-- daseva, Jun 17 2005


+WOW.
-- Zimmy, Sep 26 2006


Or cover a dance floor with bumps so you and the wife can Slow Dance and read the newspaper with your bare feets.
-- popbottle, Apr 29 2015


Or on a spool as a footrest, so's you can eat and drink and read a book at the same time.
-- FlyingToaster, Apr 29 2015


Footnotes.
-- AusCan531, Apr 29 2015


Toe-ken applause.
-- normzone, Apr 29 2015



random, halfbakery