Hello,
I've been slowly increasing my distance running on a chip seal road and I love and hate it.
This chip seal is the road outside my house. It is small sharp rocks about 1/4 of an inch. The worst is where they are patching it and there is lots of loose rocks also. From a few pictures I've seen it's on the milder side as far as how it can go.
My best run so far was just under 4 miles and the first half the run felt so good. I was running on the worst parts of the road intentionally and was amazed how good every stone felt. It always had some discomfort before but this felt really good. Towards the end my feet got sensitive and I chose to walk the last bit. I had a small hot spot on the ball of each foot. I could see where the skin had worn away a little.
I probably started over striding after a big hill, but all the runs on chip seal are kind of like that, they start easy on the feet and gets harder. The easier is getting amazingly better; I remember when I first started and it hurt to just walk on it when going accros the road to get the mail.
Will chip seal always tear up the feet? Am I just developing thicker skin so it takes longer? It can feel so good it makes me wonder how it can be bad, and if the problem is only my form.
Thanks Eric
I've been slowly increasing my distance running on a chip seal road and I love and hate it.
This chip seal is the road outside my house. It is small sharp rocks about 1/4 of an inch. The worst is where they are patching it and there is lots of loose rocks also. From a few pictures I've seen it's on the milder side as far as how it can go.
My best run so far was just under 4 miles and the first half the run felt so good. I was running on the worst parts of the road intentionally and was amazed how good every stone felt. It always had some discomfort before but this felt really good. Towards the end my feet got sensitive and I chose to walk the last bit. I had a small hot spot on the ball of each foot. I could see where the skin had worn away a little.
I probably started over striding after a big hill, but all the runs on chip seal are kind of like that, they start easy on the feet and gets harder. The easier is getting amazingly better; I remember when I first started and it hurt to just walk on it when going accros the road to get the mail.
Will chip seal always tear up the feet? Am I just developing thicker skin so it takes longer? It can feel so good it makes me wonder how it can be bad, and if the problem is only my form.
Thanks Eric