Sunday afternoon
4.36 mi / 7 km
1 mi shod in Aqua Lites, 3.36 miles bare
30 F / -1 C
15 F / -9.5 C windchill
I drove up to the fairgrounds instead of running there as warm-up because I needed to pick up some grocery supplies for my folks on the way back. Commuting to my run turned out to be advantageous for my running too, because I didn't have to run on the slushy sidewalks getting there.
Most of the fairgrounds roads were clear of slush, but still had a fair amount of wet sections. I ran the first mile shod, to make sure my feet were good and warmed up. My late-December frostnip mishap has made me much more cautious. Once nipped, twice shy, isn't that the expression? I don't want to do anything to put my ability to run bare at risk again.
After a mile I took off my shoes and just ran back and forth on a section of mostly dry asphalt about .4 miles long, on one of the main fairgrounds streets. I've concluded that I'm just not very good at running in shoes, even minimalist minimalist ones like the Aqua Lites. My form feels much better bare, and I seem to run at least 15 seconds per mile faster at a similar level of effort.
Perhaps I should adopt Dama's approach and run bare on a treadmill instead of shod outside when it gets too cold for bfr. Nah, I'd miss the outdoors too much. Pretty much the only times I get outside in the winter is to run or go sledding with the kids. Plus it was boring enough to run back and forth, back and forth, on the same section of road yesterday. The run began to drag on towards the end. I never get that 'how much longer?' interrogative feeling when I'm running a proper out-n-back.
Anyway, my nascent toe calluses felt fine after Thursday's somewhat bareful run, so I wanted to double the bareable distance, which I was able to do. My feet started to numb up, however, after about three miles bare (it gets pretty windy up by the top part of the fairgrounds), and my legs still felt a bit heavy after doing squats the day before, so I decided to cut the run short at that point. I had intended to run six miles or so, but couldn't bare the thought of putting the shoes back on for the last mile or so after experiencing the soleful pleasure of so much bfr for the first time in almost two months.
It was just as well, my left MCL is still a bit gimpy, so it was probably best not to push things, although it felt OK during the run. It did get a bit painful later though, while lying in bed, so hard to know exactly how to proceed. I think Willie is right that with at least some kinds of injuries, 'active recovery' is feasible, and I think this MCL tweak is one of those. It seems to be mostly sensitive to severe bending and lateral pressure, so I don't think running does it much harm.
Good to see Scedastic found the eighth week in a timely manner, and a belated congratulations on a 1000 messages!
It's fun reading about Sid, Scedastic, and HBS's swimming adventures. I'm enviously supportive of your multimodal aerobic fitness! I think perhaps I'll follow JT's example and take up tree climbing, to complement the swimming and complete our reporting set of physical fitness media modalities--land, water, air. I guess we'd still be missing fire as an essential element. Perhaps RP can figure out a way work that in. I'd pay good money to see it.