My First Real Barefoot Run - Over 1min 41 secs - 15th Feb 2013

So today I had my first barefoot run. Ok my second barefoot run but my first PROPER barefoot run (over 1:41secs), no Vibrams and out on the street. 
Today’s run went far better than Tuesday’s. I managed about 3miles. 
I took Ken Bob’s advice and picked a route that included large parts of stony areas to start fine tuning my technique. Pain is the best teacher and you’ve two coaches right on the end of your legs!
The first part of my run was a 1/4 mile run down the entry to the country park. A rough road, nothing too crazy but sore enough (I thought), until I got to the bottom of the road. 
See the pic above of the path that greeted me. 
Small stones about the size of Lego pieces, and just as sore to stand on! 
They caused the same partially angry, murmuring reaction you get from standing on Lego. 
I tell you what, it definitely helped the technique from the off. I had to bend the legs LOTS, and soften my footfall. 
It wasn’t too bad for the first, oooh 5-6 minutes, then I stood on the first stone that nailed the centre of my sole. I’d liken it to the same sort of pain you get when you stub your toe. The kind that makes swear incredibly intensely, but under your breath! (GRRRFFNNNJFFNRRAARRR)
But I just kept going and, hey, the pain subsided. It taught me pretty quickly to bend the knees even more.
I nailed another stone further down the path that caught me in the slightly vulnerable bit between the ball of my foot and my big toe. Jesus, it was a sore one. From then on pretty much everything hurt… That stretch of path lasted forever! It was like an evil pointy Yellow Brick Road. It was probably only about a mile but, as I took a wrong turn early on and had to turn back, it took wayyyy longer than it should have. I started actively searching out puddles and mud. I kid you not, after running/hobbling the Lego gauntlet, there’s nothing finer than running through a cold muddy puddle! Bliss! 
I then came across my first dog walker… I spotted her quite a distance away whilst hopping on one foot, cursing wildly under my breath, and thought “Right, man up big guy, gotta look like this is perfectly natural and you are the running elite. This doesn’t hurt! GRRRRR”. 
Just before she caught sight of me, I went over on stone which hit me dead centre of my right sole. It caused my foot to go over slightly before correcting itself, causing me to momentarily lose balance (and my cool persona). I just got it together in time, made eye contact, smiled and said hello. She immediately looked down, and in the highest pitched, most shocked voice I’ve ever heard said “Noooooo shoooooooooes!”. Lol, brilliant. It was like the voice in the old Clarks ad that said “Ooooh, new shoes”. In my elite runner, cool persona frame of mind I said…”Jesus, it hurts more than it looks!”. WTF was I thinking. Lol. But hey, I managed to keep going and not stub a toe or stand on anything too pointy until she was out of sight…and earshot. 
I managed to make it through the forest section and up on the road again. After the horror that was the stony bit, that road felt like running on clouds! Bliss! Happy times. 
I came out on to the road behind a cyclist. The road is a steep (reallllly steep incline) out of the park. The cyclist was huffing and puffing his way up the hill like an asthmatic duck, making panting and quacking sounds. To his credit he didn’t stop and nailed the whole hill to the top. He was clearly in the highest gear possible and his little were peddling like a hamster in a wheel. Had he been on a straight in a lower gear, he’d have broken the sound barrier with the speed he should have been going but, as it was, his frantic peddling had him crawling up the hill ahead of me. It was fairly evident, early on, I was going to pass him on the climb. It was also fairly evident he wasn’t going to see or hear me until the last minute, with my new found ninja like silent foot steps and his panting and quacking. 
Luckily he pulled over near the top before I reached him, and neither him or I had to suffer the indignity of him falling off his bike from surprise at me appearing like some sort of lunatic from the bushes or at the sight of my barefeet. He clocked me before I’d the chance, to be honest. So again, I made eye contact and smiled. Instead of saying hello, he just stared gormlessly at me and my feet, panting and quacking. He clearly couldn’t think of anything to say other than “FEEEEEET! (Quack)” And decided to keep his mouth shut. So I glided past him, with an oddly satisfied kind of smile.
This part of the run was fairly easy going. Nice smooth road, happy feet.
I then got up in to the “Dog walking field”. Notoriously muddy and unkempt. I was kinda looking forward to this if I’m honest, knowing how muddy and soothing it would be and the fact that its one big hill down to the beach. 
However, fairly quickly I realised that wet mud, barefeet and hills make for the kind of hilarity that makes for Youtube gold! 
In the first muddy puddle I stepped in, the mud surpassed my ankle and went half way up to my knee, my foot sinking fairly deep! Kinda of a liberating sensation actually. If I’d have been in my £90 asics, I would have been horrified at it, but in my barefeet I was like a kid in a pair of wellies, stomping every puddle I could see! :)
That is until the down hill section…
Or the slippy, sliding, careening ride of death to the bottom, as I’ve now christened it. 
I wish I could have seen me from someone else’s eyes whooping and slipping all the way down, whilst still trying to run. I made a good 7 or 8 involuntary whoops and yelps sliding on one foot, the other raised high in the air, my body arched backward trying to auto-correct my balance, leaving my dignity well behind me in the mud. Thankfully I didn’t actually fall at all and no one saw me, I don’t think. But the last portion of hill down was another stony path, this one steep enough to be worthy of a pair of skis. 
Hands up, I had to walk it. It was freakin lethal! Multiple stones the size of Hot Wheels cars, and just as slippy. I had to unashamedly tender foot it down the grassy verge on the side, hoping I didn’t have to unleash another involuntary whoop on the world. 
But when I got to the bottom…. Oh yes…. Relatively smooth path, minimal stones, those of which were tiny. TINY! :) 
The path led the full length of both beaches, a good 4-500 metres. I confidently passed two dogs walkers on this section. Oh yes. Not a flinch in sight. Admittedly they both avoided eye contact with me as if I had some sort of body deformity. In an “Oh god, don’t stare kind of way!” Heads held way too high to be comfortable, but hey I don’t care. Lol, in my head I was the elite athlete again. Barefoot dude, HARDCORE! 
I had one more stony hill path ahead I knew of, which I had to grimace up, bottling all my pain and cursing as there was a family at the bottom, out for a walk. I’m talking a 4-5yr old kid who really didn’t need to hear me muttering obscenities under my breath, let alone the pride I would lose havin to hobble up the path. I could only imagine them looking at me thinkin “What did he think would happen, he has no freakin shoes on! What an eejit!”. 
The path at the top was fine and I had one more careening, sliding field of death to traverse down before the final run back up the road to the car. 
I’ll be honest, despite what you’ve read here, it was a great run. The flat paths were just awesome and had me thinking, “I could actually do this half marathon barefoot”. The stony paths, although sore at the time, I feel has helped me with distributing my weight to avoid injury. Sure those Lego stones were freakin brutal but I look forward to the day I can run them relatively pain free, like the hardcore elite barefoot athlete I pretend to be, passing dog walkers and cyclists.
Sure my feet are tender now, and kinda hot, but I made a big step today! A proper barefoot run, no Vibrams. 
Bring on my next run!

Comments

Way to go! Those Lego stones suck!! (I dont think you ever really get used to them...but you get better at seeing them before you step on them! ;) ).
 

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