Day Off

I've been running every other day for the last three weeks now.  That's a much better schedule than I was able to do between my injury in June and the Warrior Dash.  The Warrior Dash on July 23rd was the last time I've worn shoes to run and I've been steadily increasing my distance even since.  In fact, my first barefoot run was only one mile just to see if I could do it.  I went out last Saturday evening and did 3.4 miles!  That was my third 5K distance last week.  I guess you could say that its been going pretty well.  I've been careful to not do too much and to just listen to my feet while I am out and the miles have come pretty naturally.  i'm pretty psyched up about my results so far.  I might even be wicked psyched.

I haven't had any new blisters for quite a while, but I'm still having trouble picking my left foot up and preventing a hard push-off.  I've literally been scraping the skin of my left big toe away on each run.  So I figured a day off is warranted.  I pretty much always have some soreness in my feet the morning after a run too.  I'm just assuming that is normal after doing 3+ miles barefoot on asphalt and concrete when you are still new at it.  I'll find out for sure on Wednesday when I get to ask Jason Robillard in person!  Tradehome Shoes and Merrell are sponsoring Jason to come and give a barefoot clinic in Rochester before is appearance at the Naked Foot 5K in Minneapolis on August 20th.  The Robillard's are rolling into Rochester on Wednesday and there is a group run scheduled for that night.  Here are the event detail links for the "Barefoot Week" in Minnesota.  (I just dubbed it "Barefoot Week".  I'm probably the only one, but whatever.)

Group Run

Barefoot Clinic

Naked Foot 5K

On interesting thing that has happened over the past few weeks is the change in how I view rocks on the trail.  When I first kicked off the shoes in July, a rock was any size of pebble on the trail that might be bigger than a grain of sand.  On my Thursday run, I missed spotting one that was your average sized river rock for landscaping and I hit it with the arch of my foot.  I must have been really spaced out at that point to miss a rock that size, but I'm still amazed at my reaction.  The instant I hit it, my whole body reacted and my foot came right off of it.  I hadn't even hit it hard enough to cause a sensation of pain, just a sensation of something that wasn't supposed to be there.  Our bodies can be pretty amazing when we let them!