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21 September, 2010 By Soul Man Leave a Comment

Barefoot In The City

Bristol City

All change on the training. We moved offices yesterday and are now located in the City Centre rather in leafy Clifton on the edge of the Downs, so I needed to find a new barefoot route.  I mapped one out on the computer at 1.7 miles, which is the furthest I have done so far.  It runs around the Harbour and Queen’s Square and at lunchtime I went out for the first time.

The strange thing is that I felt so much more self consicous in the city centre.  Up on the Downs there are so many runners and people just hanging out and playing games – plus it’s the centre of student land – but down in the city it’s obviously more business-like and I felt much more of an oddity.

Some of the time I was preempting and deflecting their glances, other times I tried not to notice.  I felt a curious mix of shame and defiance.

But what was the territory like itself?  A hell of a lot of cobbles.  Some really good, others quite big with deep gaps between them – tricky, and my outer toes seemed to be catching the edge of them. It was great going back to Queen’s Square, where I ran my first barefoot run in June and the grit didn’t seem as bad – still not good.

Anatomically it was all fine but with 100% hard surfaces for the route my feet did feel like they’d had a pounding – much more so than the Downs where 50% of the route is on packed earth path or grass.

So once again, it’s got to be softly, softly.

Filed Under: barefoot running diaries Tagged With: city, Clifton, cobbles, defiance, Downs, earth, grit, hard, sfotly, shame, toes

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