Back at home, back at work and back to barefoot, but what to do about the cold weather?
I don’t want my feet to get frozen again, like they were in Berlin, but I haven’t managed to track down any cheap Aqua Shoes yet and the pavement looks very cold.
I don’t want to put on my cross-country shoes, as it’s not close enough to barefoot, so I opt for transition shoes. On a wet day I put on my Inov-8s, which have absolutely grip, and head off with the dog up the hill. Then slide down the hill, where the cows have reduced the path to pock-marked mud. So I slither over the newly-sown wheat and make my way to the top and take off my shoes.
Running over the flat top of the hill is easy, but then the path goes into the woods and there are an awful lot of long brambles and slender remnants of nettles left over from summer. I discover how effective the gap between your first two toes is at stripping the leaves from a nettle stem, and the top of my foot smarts for the rest of the day.
On my way through the next village I come across the same problem I faced in Berlin – grit. There it was on park pathways and here it just seems to be on every surface I run on. And as I repeatedly brush it from my feet and repeatedly pick it up again I realise that it’s the wet weather that is the problem. What would have fallen away in dry weather clings like iron filings to a magnet in the wet.
So I try just wearing my socks, but no shoes, and it really helps. When I get back to the fields the socks are off until I get home.
By the way – this was my 20th barefoot run!
Week 22 Summary
Total miles: 9.3 over two runs, damp, grass, mud, pavements, tarmac, footpaths, woodlands, cobbles
Total barefoot miles: 2, over one run, damp, grass, mud, tarmac, footpaths, woodland
Total transition miles: 1 over damp grass and mud
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