Last Sunday I completed my first official 5K race completely barefoot!
it felt Great! I'm so happy and can't wait to do it again.
You can check how I got the courage to sign for the race on my previous blog entries, well for this race I had specially made a paracord anklet to hold the time chip.
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I was nervous the night before but managed to get some sleep, I was up early and started to get myself ready, I arrived at the start line early and began doing my warmup/strech routine wearing my VFF's since I did not wanted the extra attention while I was getting ready, as I tought there was no other barefoot runner there, 10 minutes before the start I was already on my starting corral and took off the VFF's and strap them to my fanny pack, all of the sudden I felt all eyes on me hehehe, I could hear people on the background whispering about it, I just put on my sunglasses and ignore them, there was just one runner who came and said hi and asked my why I was doing it, "Because I can, because I like" is my best answer so far.
The race started and I was at the back of the group trying to avoid being stomped as myself and other 3500 runners began their course, not even 100 meters had passed when I found my first obstacle, one I was not prepared, a sewer ran trough all the street, the grill tipe, I did not knew what to do, I tried to go to the sidewalk but the crowd did not made it easy so I just sprinted and jumped! I landed safely and kept going on as I hear all this whispering as I passed people on the first kilometers, funny thing there seems to be an effect on people when you pass them barefoot that makes them sprint! I guess they think "How come he can run faster than me without shoes?"
I ran at a comfortable pace which is 7 min/Km for me and finished in 34:22, chip time: 33:36, my legs could have kept going for a lot more but my feet were starting to feel a little "burn"
this is how my foot looked at the end:
I did not felt any pain and only a little blister on the second toe of my right foot showed up the day after.
It was a great experience and definitely would do it again, my next goal is a 10K #challengeaccepted
here Iam at the finish line
Thanks for reading
Pon
My First Barefoot 5K
Blog entry posted by Pon, Oct 23, 2012.
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