Four weeks of barefoot running, and feeling fine.
My run last Sunday was a bit more difficult.
The weather has been very hot for the past week, with temperatures of around 35C (95F?)... We really enjoyed our biologically filtered swimming pond, and I have been around in the garden barefoot the whole day... And probably that wasn't so smart: After the digging for the pond there still is much of sandy soil uncovered, and that black sand heats terribly in the sun.
So I guess I got my soles slightly burned just by walking on the sand...
And then I went out for a run on sunday evening. I'm using the 6weeks variant of Start-to-Run, a Belgian program similar to C25K (but it comes in different 'flavors', from 6 to 15 weeks, depending on your condition and former running).
I always start with a 5 minutes brisk walk... and that's 1 minute of velvetty smooth concrete, 1 minute of asphalt that's a bit rougher, 2 minutes of very rough asphalt, 50 yards of a sandy trail and then a minute on rough chip&seal.
On the rough asphalt I already started feeling a sharp ache under the metatarsal head of my right little toe. Felt like a sharp stone sticking to my foot, but there was nothing...
When I started running I still felt the pain, but it disappeared after paying close attention to my form.
The rest of my run went rather well, most of it is on not so coarse asphalt. But when I arrived again on the chip&seal I tensed up, and the pain came back immediately and I couldn't make it disappear this time.
I guess it was the combination of the rough surface and my slightly burned soles that gave me this problem.
Yesterday I took the same route, but I took my invisible shoes with me, and wore them for walking on the roughest parts. And indeed... I was more relaxed when I started to run (completely barefoot) on the chip&seal, and not the slightest trace of the pain I had two days before...
I ran a bit further than my program told me (the running parts totalling 17 minutes), and today I still have no problem...
Looking forward to my run tomorrow!
My run last Sunday was a bit more difficult.
The weather has been very hot for the past week, with temperatures of around 35C (95F?)... We really enjoyed our biologically filtered swimming pond, and I have been around in the garden barefoot the whole day... And probably that wasn't so smart: After the digging for the pond there still is much of sandy soil uncovered, and that black sand heats terribly in the sun.
So I guess I got my soles slightly burned just by walking on the sand...
And then I went out for a run on sunday evening. I'm using the 6weeks variant of Start-to-Run, a Belgian program similar to C25K (but it comes in different 'flavors', from 6 to 15 weeks, depending on your condition and former running).
I always start with a 5 minutes brisk walk... and that's 1 minute of velvetty smooth concrete, 1 minute of asphalt that's a bit rougher, 2 minutes of very rough asphalt, 50 yards of a sandy trail and then a minute on rough chip&seal.
On the rough asphalt I already started feeling a sharp ache under the metatarsal head of my right little toe. Felt like a sharp stone sticking to my foot, but there was nothing...
When I started running I still felt the pain, but it disappeared after paying close attention to my form.
The rest of my run went rather well, most of it is on not so coarse asphalt. But when I arrived again on the chip&seal I tensed up, and the pain came back immediately and I couldn't make it disappear this time.
I guess it was the combination of the rough surface and my slightly burned soles that gave me this problem.
Yesterday I took the same route, but I took my invisible shoes with me, and wore them for walking on the roughest parts. And indeed... I was more relaxed when I started to run (completely barefoot) on the chip&seal, and not the slightest trace of the pain I had two days before...
I ran a bit further than my program told me (the running parts totalling 17 minutes), and today I still have no problem...
Looking forward to my run tomorrow!
