Foot Scraping/Pedicure- WARNING- Gross Pictures!!

[Jaqa]

Hi Guys
One of the great things living in Asia is the amount of places offering foot massages cheaply which is a real treat for us BF'rs.

So we were in Hong Kong this weekend and decided to treat ourselves to a foot massage. My girlfriend had been to this place before and it came highly recommended. As our feet were soaking, one of the guys came in, looked at my feet and told me I had to get my feet scraped. After a second's thought, I was like, Sure, wonder how much skin you are going to be able to take off, my feet get naturally abraded, that's just fleshy, fatty padding you are feeling.

Well, I was pretty damn wrong!!

A half hour later, 2 knifes blunted, and the masseurs and my GF in hysterics, it looked like a cup of shaved coconut had been dumped in his lap. He had never seen feet like mine before!

My feet now feel very thin and more flexible. The last few months, I had felt a certain tightness when I curled my toes up or down. I thought this was just me being lazy with rolling a ball under my soles. I need to go for a run later today to see how they feel. Probably just a short one. But this will be a very interesting experiment/experience to see how fast my soles "adapt" to barefoot running coming from a place where I can do up 25k barefoot anyway. (Probably not going to do 25k on these soles right now, I think......)

Anyway, here are the pics......

 

[Jaqa]

He was a good sport!

 

[hikerdana]

Please let us know how your run went. Can you see the difference? How long have you been a barefooted?

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[Barefoot TJ]

I wonder what Ken Bob's feet would do?

 

[Jaqa]

I went for a 12k/1:06h run this morning. So 40 hours after the scraping.

My feet definitely felt a lot more tender. I ran down the main shopping street, Orchard Rd and then back along a parallel road. A very wide variety of surfaces, from tarmac to all sorts of tiling/paving to pure gravel etc. Where the surface was smooth I felt nothing but tarmac was very noticeable. Not uncomfortable though.

I think my skin was acting like a rocker plate in a trail running shoe- taking out all the small bumps. At one point I stepped up a curb using only my toes and felt a pin prick of pain in my plantar fascia as something pulled. So I think there was a kind of spring effect of all that excess skin?? Pain disappeared in a couple of steps anyway.

After the run I am feeling more tender. Might just wear some soft shoes today.

Will post an update in some days time.

 

[Jaqa]

Please let us know how your run went. Can you see the difference? How long have you been a barefooted?

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

I have been 25% barefoot running for a year and 99% barefoot running for 6 months now. But I did grow up and work on a farm in South Africa, only started wearing shoes to school at 10yo, trail ran the last 7 years in Inov8 shoes, and I do have tough, thick skin. I do not blister or bruise easily. After some minor surgery, my GP told my mom that my skin was the toughest that he has ever cut, and that was under my chin!

 

[Jaqa]

Just to give a final update on the above:-

It has been just over 3 weeks ago that my feet got scraped. Last week I did roughly 5x10km barefoot runs of varying intensity, and a 21k trail run with Inov8 TrailRoc 235's (Zero Drop, no socks) at about a 85% effort. So a fair bit... The trail run was brutal, as expected, with real feel temperatures above 40C at 08h00 etc etc

Anyway, my feet feel fine! They are still softer than before but I have not thought about them in a caring way all week.

So, if you are considering getting this done be prepared for about 2 weeks max of being more carefull with your soles. Might be nice to start an off-season with this.?

As for why getting this done? I can't think of a solid reason. My feet were becoming tight across the bottom but it has not, before or after, affected my running. Maybe your better half is complaining, neighbors think its weird you strike matches across your soles, farriers are cold calling............