{"id":2538,"date":"2011-10-10T11:40:14","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T10:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/?p=2538"},"modified":"2011-10-10T11:40:14","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T10:40:14","slug":"weeks-8-and-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/weeks-8-and-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeks 8 and 9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I said in my last post, I&#8217;ve been away over the last week on holiday.\u00a0 I had a lovely time, catching up with family I haven&#8217;t seen for a few months and relaxing after a hectic last couple of months.\u00a0 Week 8 was spent at home, following much the same routine as the last few weeks.\u00a0 Week 9 was my holiday week, which I spent mostly barefoot, playing a couple of games of tennis, walking and running on a variety of surfaces (sand, gravel, grass, heather, roads) which was amazing.\u00a0 The kind of sensory feedback you get from having bare skin in contact with such a range of materials and textures 24 hours a day is just incredible.\u00a0 I&#8217;m back\u00a0in the real world\u00a0now, and even wearing\u00a0socks feels constricting.\u00a0 We&#8217;re staring at the business end of winter now, with cold, windy and wet weather coming up.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure just how much barefooting (apart from running)\u00a0I&#8217;m going to be able to do between now and spring, and I think I&#8217;m going to miss it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;ve combined my two weeks in the summary form below.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Total weekly miles<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0Week 8 &#8211; 1.7 miles,\u00a0week 9 &#8211; 1 mile (plus a few games of tennis and lots of walking)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Number of running sessions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Week 8 &#8211; 3, week 9 &#8211; 1.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Total weekly barefoot miles<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Week 8 &#8211; 1.7\u00a0mile, week 9 &#8211; 1 (plus whatever I covered in tennis&#8230; which probably doesn&#8217;t amount to much!).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Number of barefoot running sessions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Week 8 &#8211; 3, week 9 &#8211; 1.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Running terrain<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Flat circuit outside my house on pavement.\u00a0 In week 9, it was made up of gentle hills.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ground surface of barefoot runs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A mix of smooth and rough pavement and road, with some gravel tracks in week 9.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Runs in minimalist shoes, e.g. Five Fingers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Weather for barefoot runs (rain on road?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Three dry runs in week 9, one dry run in week 9.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Condition of skin on feet \u2014 hotspots, blisters<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Good.\u00a0\u00a0No issues from running.\u00a0 My right foot felt a little sore after the 1 mile run, but was fine the next day.\u00a0 Even after a week of\u00a0living barefoot, my skin is in good condition.\u00a0 No blisters, sore spots,\u00a0nothing like that at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Interesting\/amusing comments received during the week: e.g. \u2018You\u2019ve got no shoes on!\u2019<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>No comments.\u00a0 Some looks again, especially when I was out walking.\u00a0 Everyone else I met had enormous hiking boots, waterproofs, hiking poles and rucksacks, and there I was in shorts, a tshirt and bare feet.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know what they thought about me, but I felt kind of sorry for them!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Treading on nasty things: e.g. glass, thorns, poo \u2014 how you dealt with any<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For the first time, I actually had a problem (not counting the exploding toe incident of a couple of weeks ago!).\u00a0 I got a thorn stuck in a toe while I was walking around.\u00a0 It was a bit uncomfortable, but I was able to ignore it until I got home.\u00a0\u00a0I dug it out with a safety pin that evening, and had no problems subsequently.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Changes in your running style that you\u2019ve noticed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None.\u00a0 I started to feel tired towards the end of my mile run, presumably because that&#8217;s the furthest I&#8217;ve run in almost 3 months (wow&#8230; has it really been that long?!).\u00a0 I&#8217;ve read other blogs that suggest that it&#8217;s difficult to keep good form when you get tired, so I made sure I concentrated on my form even more then.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Injuries incurred, or reduction of existing symptoms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None.\u00a0\u00a0I&#8217;m going to try for 3 (0r 4) runs of 0.75ish miles this week.\u00a0 The slight pain I had in my foot after my 1 mile run last week suggests I&#8217;m not quite ready for that distance\u00a0yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Useful tips and nuggets of info you\u2019ve picked up along the way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if this will sound silly or useless or what, but I&#8217;ve\u00a0kind of fallen into\u00a0a way of making sure that my cadence stays high while I&#8217;m running.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve found myself counting along to my steps as I run,\u00a0saying &#8220;1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3&#8230;&#8221; with a footfall on each number.\u00a0 The natural speed for me when\u00a0I\u00a0count like\u00a0this is a little faster than 180 steps per minute (I checked by cycling along to this counting on a stationary bike with an rpm display).\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ve explained this very well, or if it will be useful to anyone who reads this, but that&#8217;s how I do it.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve read of other people running along to music, to metronomes, and various other ways of keeping your tempo up.\u00a0 This way seems to work best for me.\u00a0 Keeping your tempo up helps to prevent you over-striding, which prevents you from hurting yourself.\u00a0 So any way you can find to help to keep your tempo up is\u00a0good in my book!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I said in my last post, I&#8217;ve been away over the last week on holiday.\u00a0 I had a lovely time, catching up with family I haven&#8217;t seen for a few months and relaxing after a hectic last couple of months.\u00a0 Week 8 was spent at home, following much the same routine as the last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"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-2538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-barefoot-running-diaries","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538","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\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2539,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions\/2539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}