Barefoot

02/28/2010 - 03/06/2010

Against all odds, I did my first barefoot run this week. I'm not a fan of trendy-hype-y things, and well, that's what barefoot running has started to seem like lately. In addition, I have abysmal arches, and previous attempts to deviate from my orthotics have lead to bad things. Nevertheless, I've noticed an improvement on the injury front after making an active effort to transition myself to being more of a mid/fore-foot striker. Upon hearing Dr. Shapiro's treatise on the benefits of not having a heel to one's shoe... I decided to test out the theory by running barefoot on the North Field.

My barefoot run, despite being serendipitously placed as a late night double on my one "hard" day, was surprisingly awesome! Running has never felt so much like flying--easy, natural, fast. Towards the end, I was hitting paces I haven't been able to touch in years with ease. Wow, super awesome run... almost worth the 2 weeks of being crippled that has ensued.


Sunday 02/28: Both distance and time unclear: 8.5 miles, 75 minutes for the sake of book-keeping, The Other Arroyo Adventure with Ian and Dennis
Felt inexplicably "off" from the get-go, which made this run moderately miserable despite the snail's pace... but that was compensated by the coolness of the new trail. We were originally destined for Brown Mountain, but apparently that route is now patrolled by rangers, keeping folks out :(. Instead, headed into the Art Center hills via the heretofore theoretical Other Arroyo Trail. Really neat discovery, will definitely explore further when I feel a little less lousy.

Monday 03/01: 5.3 miles, 46:44 (8:49 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Arrrrghhhh.... lousiness continues. Whole body feels tired, just plodded along, and then eventually I finished this run. Also 6 am run has re-deteriorated to 7 am run... nuts...

Tuesday 03/02: AM: another lazy person's workout: Mini-tempo in the Arroyo + 6 x striders
1 lap warm up jog around Arroyo Tempo Loop (14:22), then one lap sub-threshold tempo (11:24) was hoping to do two, but for some reason I'm really scared to push the limits these days... so I stopped while I was still feeling good. To atone for this deficiency, I did a long-ish cooldown along the Arroyo 3 mile loop (26:10), with 6 x striders embedded, ~6.1 miles total. Felt sufficiently worn out afterwards that I didn't feel quite as badly about abandoning the second tempo loop.

PM: 3.1 miles, 23:58 (7:44 min/mile) 10 x barefoot North Field Laps
Super awesome barefoot run after work. NF maps really conveniently to 500m, so I decided to do 10 laps. 2K-2K-1K splits were 9:53, 9:30, 4:35 which means that I started out at a little over 8 min/miles and finished off near 7:20 pace. Felt easy and good the whole way, so good that I felt giddy with excitement! Barefoot boggles my mind... calves felt surprisingly good until the 9th lap when I could start to feel the cramping coming on, but the rest of me felt so great, I had to finish the original plan for 10 laps. If the cramping hadn't happened, I was debating staying and running for an hour.

Wednesday 03/03: 7.6 miles, 1:04:21 (8:28 min/mile) Steve's Lil' Engine to Alpine via Huntington/Garfield/Mission
Holy moly, my calves hurt so badly every step feels like I'm about to do a faceplant. For some reason I decided that the way to cure this was to do an easy jog, so I plotted a nice grassy route home from dropping my car off in the morning. I kept waiting for my calves to unclench, but... somehow that never happened. They felt momentarily better after stretching at a few lights, but went straight back to horrendously painful about 50 feet later. Ohhhhhh man. On the upside I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was actually not running the 10 minute miles that I felt like I was running.

Thursday - Friday 03/04 - 03/05: Off. Calves were 100% worse after yesterday's run, so I decided that perhaps I should give it a rest. Unfortunately there was minimal improvement even after 2 days off. I feel like my walking stride is even altered, because my calves do not support any weight anymore. Ouch-y.....

Saturday 03/06: ~7.7 miles, ~1:07:30 (~8:46 min/mile) California around RB perimeter
Me and Dennis were super late to KB's Arroyo run... as a result, Dennis was able to catch up with them, and I was not. Basically, my calves started killing me as soon as I started running, which made it physically impossible to do anything other than shuffle along at an inordinately slow pace. Resigning myself to running alone, I decided to stick with my theory that enough slow jogging would loosen up my calves. Fortunately after about 35 minutes, the pain started to ease up a little bit, enough to allow a more normal stride/pace. In the interim, I fell into a thigh deep water pit during the river crossing at the North end of the Rose Bowl. This was so discombobulating to me that I forgot to re-start my watch... and therefore the time of the run is estimated.

Week Total: 38.3 miles, not bad for 5 days.... but holy crap I hope I haven't incurred permanent damage to my calves....