Hey, I've been lurking for a while now, and love the forum. So an introduction might be in order.
I'm pretty new to running in general (just finished the C25K program a week or so ago). I fell in love with running pretty early on, but my knees didn't. I was browsing a bunch of different running sites, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong (I was already trying to do Chi running, but that didn't seem to work well enough), when I stumbled upon barefoot running, and things just clicked.
First of all, I've never liked shoes too much. My feet get hot and uncomfortable very fast, so I tend to take them off as much as I can. Also, I'm born and raised in Iceland, and we don't wear shoes indoors (except at work, but mostly it's fine to take them off - which I tend to do, although I do wear socks a lot). Add to this the fact that last winter I was getting an MA in Theatre Directing, and spent a lot of time playing games and running around barefoot, and my feet were already in excellent condition. I still started out somewhat slow, walking around and running in place, but I accelerated very fast. In about 3 weeks I've gone from that to running for 30 minutes at a time without any trouble at all (except for form issues when I go downhill - I keep stubbing the big toe on my left foot, tearing it open ... it happened for the third time this morning). I haven't experienced any pain in my feet at all, and although my knees still bother me, they feel better than they did when I was running shod (I'm getting them checked out, anyway, but I really don't want to stop running).
I'm currently hoping to work my way up to 10K, and I'm following a pretty nice, gradual plan. I'm hoping to run a 10K race on August 20. I will listen to my body very carefully, and if I don't like the way something feels, I'll definitely slow down. As it is, I've done 30 minute runs every other day for two weeks without any discomfort at all (apart from the toe thing!), so I think it should be safe to add a long run once a week, which I'll add 5 minutes to each time. So tomorrow I'll do 35 minutes.
Well, that about sums it up, I guess.
I'm pretty new to running in general (just finished the C25K program a week or so ago). I fell in love with running pretty early on, but my knees didn't. I was browsing a bunch of different running sites, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong (I was already trying to do Chi running, but that didn't seem to work well enough), when I stumbled upon barefoot running, and things just clicked.
First of all, I've never liked shoes too much. My feet get hot and uncomfortable very fast, so I tend to take them off as much as I can. Also, I'm born and raised in Iceland, and we don't wear shoes indoors (except at work, but mostly it's fine to take them off - which I tend to do, although I do wear socks a lot). Add to this the fact that last winter I was getting an MA in Theatre Directing, and spent a lot of time playing games and running around barefoot, and my feet were already in excellent condition. I still started out somewhat slow, walking around and running in place, but I accelerated very fast. In about 3 weeks I've gone from that to running for 30 minutes at a time without any trouble at all (except for form issues when I go downhill - I keep stubbing the big toe on my left foot, tearing it open ... it happened for the third time this morning). I haven't experienced any pain in my feet at all, and although my knees still bother me, they feel better than they did when I was running shod (I'm getting them checked out, anyway, but I really don't want to stop running).
I'm currently hoping to work my way up to 10K, and I'm following a pretty nice, gradual plan. I'm hoping to run a 10K race on August 20. I will listen to my body very carefully, and if I don't like the way something feels, I'll definitely slow down. As it is, I've done 30 minute runs every other day for two weeks without any discomfort at all (apart from the toe thing!), so I think it should be safe to add a long run once a week, which I'll add 5 minutes to each time. So tomorrow I'll do 35 minutes.
Well, that about sums it up, I guess.
