12 days of running:<\/p>\n
1st<\/sup> week<\/p>\n Total miles: 40<\/p>\n Number of running sessions: 6<\/p>\n Barefoot miles: about 2, in one session<\/p>\n Five Finger miles: 2<\/p>\n 2nd<\/sup> week: This was a funny week. We\u2019re on holiday so lots of trekking in the Rockies so have so far only done one run, 7 miles, with just the last three quarters of a mile in bare feet. On tarmac, but the tarmac where I\u2019m staying in Canada is very smooth and altogether less abrasive than the one I have near home.<\/p>\n The last time I reported, I\u2019d had a fairly weak effort at running barefeet. I decided to rectify that straight after my last post (almost 2 weeks ago) with a 2 mile jog to the pharmacy in my Five Fingers, which I can finally put my toe in after breaking it. I was doing a hard hill session (9 miles) later that day but was conscious of the need to get back into the barefoot\/minimal protection training if I ever hope to build it up to cover most of my training. The 2 miles were fine and I felt like I could have done more, but it was all on pavement\/road and didn\u2019t want to overdo it.<\/p>\n I saw the physio the day after: he said I seem to be developing bursitis where the hamstring comes down on the inside of the back of my knee. This I attribute to a fell race 4 weeks ago that had a lot of road in it, and in which I decided to wear my shoes with orthotics in, which I think was the mistake because it forced me back onto my heels for the descent and road rather than the forefoot strike that I\u2019m trying to cultivate.<\/p>\n Despite the physio\u2019s opinion, I decided to do a 15 minute barefoot run \u2013 very gently \u2013 later that morning. In this I didn\u2019t feel any niggle behind the knee; I don\u2019t know whether this was due to him having loosened it off, or because the problem has never made itself present in my barefoot runs to date. I run with a much more upright style with no shoes on. I did step on a nettle, which stung a bit but wasn\u2019t crippling. I ran through warm damp mud \u2013 that was quite pleasant, feeling the mud squelch through my toes, although I was hoping it was actually mud and not a mixture of cow, dog and sheep poo, which is altogether less appealing. The first 400m and last 400m were on pavement and road. The pavement was okay but the road, with its coarse tarmac, did a good job in the short distance of trying to rip my feet to shreds. I imagine I\u2019ll get used to this but for now the balls of my feet are a bit tender. I\u2019m definitely getting better at coping with standing on little pebbles, which previously would cause me to stop, shout, and nearly topple over.<\/p>\n The middle part of my short barefoot run was on fell, so predominantly the wet mud and grass, interspersed with nettles and thistles. I passed a dog walker, who stopped to say hello, and then we went in our opposite directions. A little bit further on, she shouted back to me, \u201cAre you running in bare feet?\u201d (You would have thought she didn\u2019t need to bother asking; the visual evidence is pretty clear). I told her that her eyes weren\u2019t deceiving her and I was in fact in bare feet, to which she asked why, so I briefly said I was hoping to strengthen my feet and reduce injuries and then we headed off again. Yesterday I passed a neighbour when I was in my Five Fingers. He raised an eyebrow, and said hello. Today I passed him when I was jogging along the road in my bare feet. He looked, smiled, and then asked if I was alright. I said yes, he smirked, and then I went on.<\/p>\n One other thing I\u2019m hoping to get from the barefoot running is a more agile running style. I am, by nature, a clumsy runner, who always had flat feet, and I think this is what contributed to some of my injury problems. Running in bare feet forces you to be more careful about where you tread, and although I\u2019m by no means proficient or light of foot yet, having, as previously mentioned, trodden on barbed wire and broken my little toe with my careless foot placements, I think I\u2019m becoming more aware of where I put my feet, including in shoes, and hope that this continues to improve. Since I\u2019ve started to fell run, this is also very useful for fast descents and my former style of going over on my ankles and lolloping along isn\u2019t ever going to make a fell runner of me.<\/p>\n In the past week I haven\u2019t run much, having been on holiday and doing lots of walking instead. Today I did a 7 mile run that was unfortunately all on road as I don\u2019t have access to off-road where I\u2019m staying at the moment, but I did the last \u00be of a miles in barefeet to try and keep it up. Interestingly, again the niggling tightness\/pain behind the knee stopped. I\u2019ll try and do part of Thursday and Friday\u2019s runs in barefeet but it might be patchy over the next three and a half weeks as we\u2019ll be in some parks and forests where I might feel a bit vulnerable with barefeet \u2013 snakes, insects, bugs etc. We\u2019ll see how it pans out!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 12 days of running: 1st week Total miles: 40 Number of running sessions: 6 Barefoot miles: about 2, in one session Five Finger miles: 2 2nd week: This was a funny week. We\u2019re on holiday so lots of trekking in the Rockies so have so far only done one run, 7 miles, with just the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-barefoot-running-diaries","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1355,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}