Barefoot running has to take a back seat temporarily.

In order to maintain my best in terms of physical fitness, I have to take a break every now and then. I usually wait till my sister and I go on a trip to take time off from running/weight training, but because of a stupid family squabble she and I haven’t taken a trip since early last November, and therefore I haven’t taken a break from running since then.  That’s apparently too long for me to go without a break. My body is really feeling it, but I’ve stubbornly pushed myself in the misguided belief that she and I will be going away somewhere very soon and I’ll wait till that happens to take a break from my fitness routines. In the meantime, my runs take longer, are more strenuous, less enjoyable, and I haven’t been able to pursue barefoot running much in the past two weeks.

The TOFP that plagued me for the past few weeks is still bothering me. (I’m not sure if it was caused by the dreaded TMTS or by sprinting the last couple of minutes of my runs, could’ve been either.) I cut my running miles a little bit in concession, and I did buy a little cushion that gets taped to the bottom of the ball of the foot and have been using that, but the pain persists. During the first of the 2 weeks chronicled here I was able to run a whopping 1 mile out of 17.6 barefoot, but I really felt that the barefoot running was exacerbating the original issue and thought it would be wise to stop. So stop I did, and ran 20.7 miles the next week, none of them barefoot. At one point I thought the TOFP itself was changing, it felt more like a pain you feel when something is healing rather than an “ouch, something is wrong” pain. Also feel minor pain in the heel of my other foot, but it comes and goes and doesn’t feel serious.

I’ve been doing a lot more walking around at home and outside barefoot in the hopes of nudging my wayward foot back into strength and health. I’m determined to return to pain-free barefoot running sometime soon, and can’t wait to increase my barefoot mileage. In the meantime I’ll trudge on, with shoes, and hope for fixed feet and family affairs.