Saturday 20 April 2013

Running further

Well I've been keeping up with the short barefoot runs at the end of my other runs, and I can feel my soles getting stronger each time.  My feet are starting to look much nicer - instead of dry and picky skin after months of wearing fluffy socks, the pavements are working like a pumice stone and my feet are starting to become presentable!

After a 5k last weekend, I dropped my shoes (Vivos) at the house, and then did 0.6 miles in bare feet around the block.

Yesterday, we did just over 6 miles.  I wore my Vivos most of the time, but in the middle, I took them off and ran shoeless for just under a mile.  My feet felt great, really strong.  There were some very tough gravelly areas to get through, where the pavements had deteriorated badly.  These were made up of hard packed gravel with lots of loose stones, and I found these really hard going, but it made the 'normal' bits of pavement seem easy in comparison.  I put my shoes back on a bit earlier than I would have liked because of these sections.

One thing I notice is that when I run with shoes, I survey the ground to see if it would be good barefoot running, and my estimation of how difficult a particular bit of ground might be is often more cautious than the reality - i.e. I think it looks rough, but when I'm actually in bare feet on it, it's not as bad as I anticipated.  Pavements with small bits of strewn gravel are much less of a problem to run on that you might think, as my feet seem to curve around small stones.  The most difficult ground I've done so far is the hard packed gravel, as it can have some very sharp stones in and there is no respite.

A few weeks ago I did a bit of grass running, which I've never done before.  That was quite good fun too, but slower than I expected - it's actually quite demanding to run on uneven soft ground.

Anyway, I've really fallen for my Vivobarefoot shoes.  They are a tiny bit on the small side (my left big toe just clips the end of the shoe from time to time), but the toe box is really roomy, the sole is much the same as my Vibrams, and they are brilliantly light to wear.

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