Really Cold Run

The weather man said partly cloudy and cool for Wednesday. I'm leaving with my son to go run and it's snowing. So much for the weatherman. It's much colder today than it was yesterday. My goal is to increase my mileage slowly to avoid straining or injuring myself. The wind was blowing the snow so bad we skipped the stretching and I would say we ran about 4 tenths of a mile. I hope to run tomorrow and hit a half mile.

Again the five fingers did not make my feet cold, maybe that would have happened if I was running farther. I really like the five fingers but in order to save some money I plan on trying out some water shoes. I was reading a blog on barefoot running and they reviewed several kinds of minimal shoes to simulate running barefoot and watershoes were ranked the highest. I really can't find any now so hopefully I will be able to find some as warmer weather gets here. Maybe I'll do my own reviews as I try out different shoes.

Starting Over

It's Sunday February 21st. It has been really cold and snowy this year, much more than in previous years. The temps are suppose to reach high 50's, low 60's today. It's as good a day as any to put the five fingers back on and try barefoot running again. At first I was concerned that the concrete path in the park would be too cold for my feet in the five fingers. I was suprised to find out that is was really not as cold on my feet as I had thought it would be.

This time I decided to be smarter about going barefoot. The local trail is marked off in quarter mile sections so I decided that I would only run a quarter mile and walk another mile and a half. At the quarter mile marker my legs and feet felt good and I considered running longer but decided to stop and walk. It's a good thing I stopped because my calf muscles were a little sore the next day but nothing to scream about.

Rain and cold returned the next two days and that has kept me from running again. But it has given my legs time to adjust to going barefoot.

Some History

This is not my first attempt at running barefoot. My first attempt and I think everyone else who is trying out running barefoot, was after I read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall in the summer of 2009. It really is a good read even if you are not a runner. So after minimal research on the subject, I took off running. I had already run 2 or 3 5k's and took off barefoot to run 3 miles. No problem, at least until the next morning. I couldn't walk my calf muscles hurt so bad. So I did not have a great start with running barefoot. I went out and bought a pair of Vibram Fivefingers to wear, as I was concerned about broken glass and metal. I probably only ran a few more times barefoot after that and before I knew it it was winter so I stopped running barefoot and had the shoes back on full time. Again, knee and lower leg problems surfaced and I couldn't run for a month. Now it's February and I am ready to try again.