Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time, without even knowing it.
Something sticks in your mind when you normally wouldn’t give it a second thought. You start looking into a world that you were vaguely aware of and then it all kicks off.
That’s how I feel about coming upon Barefoot Running. I was dimly aware of it, but didn’t think anything of it until I completed a very long, cross-country challenge run. The niggles that developed in training left me questioning the two very different types of shoe I wear and how they were affecting my body.
As soon as I searched for Barefoot Running on the Runner’s World website I came across a new post for volunteers for Graham’s book and here I am.
Let me introduce myself, I am Dominic Weston, I am 43, and I run across the Mendip Hills in the south west of England.
I took up running in my mid-30s, starting mainly with road running and moving more and more into off-road running on trails, footpaths and always over hills. I have run many half marathons, one full marathon and a mixture of cross-country distances, but for me the views, the terrain and being outdoors has always been far more important than racking up the miles.
At the moment I am running between 15 and 30 miles a week and almost every Monday I go hashing with the Mendip Hills Hash House Harriers: http://www.mendiph4.org.uk/default.aspx – the most sociable form of running I know, and you get to see a very wide variety of scenery and pubs.
I am very aware that blog posts can run on forever, so I will end this one now, and if you want to know why I began to seriously look at Barefoot Running as the only serious direction for my future running, however long the transition will take, then read on.
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