Ow

So running in the dark is pretty fun, running along the shore of Lake Tahoe at the tail end of good run that was through the woods and over the snow. Running by the light of the half a moon, with the glass like surface of the calm, still lake reflecting the purple, snow covered mountains in the dying light of the day. The smell of burning wood from fireplaces and cooking food from restaurants nearby wafts through the air making me hungry and beckoning me to head back.

As I make my last turn on the beach and head back to where I will walk out into the lake in the dark to immerse my feet and legs into the ice cold water for a speedy recovery. Yes running in the dark is fun until you kick a big huge rock that you can't see. Like stubbing your toe, but instead of stubbing it while you are slowly walking in the dark knowing the coffee table is near at hand, I stub my toe on an immovable rock at a full run. Sickening crunch.

Ow. Sitting at home now, self medicating with Vitamin "I" and some wine I can see my pinkie toe and the one next to it (whatever the hell that toe is called?) are purple along with a good portion of the foot directly above them and the number 3 toe. Since I did finish the run (and a quick sort of dip in the lake) I guess it can't be broken, although I can't really move it either.

Should be fine to run again by the weekend, I will definitely remember where that rock is.

Snow

I’m on vacation this week in Tahoe so I’m mostly snowboarding, but I sure am missing the running. In fact my legs are feeling funny from the lack of use – I get weird little pains in random places. They only last for a few seconds and are probably spasms, but they went away since I managed to sneak out for a run today.

Of course there is a fair amount of snow here at 6,000 feet so I wasn’t exactly sure where I would go to run. All the trails that I would normally seek out in the mountains here are still covered with snow. Only the beach and the cement roads are free of snow. So I set out my front door and made it about half way down the driveway before I turned back as it was really cold. A few minutes later and an orange windbreaker heavier I was ready.

I crossed the street to the beach and of course the water level was very low, leaving plenty of beach to run on. The sand wasn’t as soft as I thought it would be, it was hard packed and wind blown pretty much like the dirt trails I have been running on lately. It was fun though running along the water’s edge with the view of the snow-covered mountains all around. However the beach is bookended by large boulders and fences for private property and I didn’t feel like running laps up and down the beach for the whole time.

So I crossed back across the street wanting to give the golf course a try. I knew it was covered with snow but I thought there might be some areas where maybe the snow had melted in places and perhaps I could string those areas without snow together into a decent run.

I was greeted with a large patch of snow, beyond which I could see brown winter grass on the side of the fairway. The snow was of course cold beneath my feet. I could feel the cold between my toes through the VFFs. My feet were already wet from the lake and as fun as it was to run on the snow, I hoped I wouldn’t have to do it the whole time… brrr!

But the snow was fun to run on… in… through… over. You could never tell what the next step would yield. Would my foot crunch through down to my ankle? Would it support my weight allowing me to glide over it and on to the next step easily? Would it be a treacherous and slippery ice spot? It definitely kept me guessing.

I’ll certainly be back for more after my feet thaw in a few days.

More

Results not typical, don't try this at home. I generally don't like to give numbers out - some look at them think they are big, others think they are small; the point here is for comparison.

A little more than a month from buying my first pair of VFFs and beginning my foray into the world of barefoot running I am amazed at my progress. I am currently running 9 miles in my VFFs twice per week - by comparison in January I was actually struggling a little bit to maintain 5 miles twice weekly in shoes. I have had 13 mile workouts in years gone by when training for triathlon or adventure racing, so 5 miles should have been a cake walk; I just assumed the running volume associated with my soccer schedule (5 hours of soccer per week) was making those 5 miles more difficult than they should have been.

But I still play soccer 3x weekly. So how am I running so much further with ease, and putting up such huge increases so fast? Did I say with ease... well I meant it. I finish every run feeling better than when I started! It is the most amazing thing.

And without injury? In fact the only thing that hurts at this point is the bottoms of my feet a little. I run mostly on trails and I figure I step (on average) on one painful rock every two miles. So at 18 miles per week, that's nine painful rocks per week. I'm still a rookie so I guess I should expect to be a bit of a tenderfoot. The hazards of being barefoot I suppose.

I seriously doubt I can continue to add a mile or so per week, that is insanity right? Or is it? At ten miles that's only a 10% increase per week - and while I haven't read any literature lately, I think most running rags allow for that increase as acceptable.

Doesn't really matter though, with four kids the real limiting factor here is going to be time, not distance. Right now I can get through those 9 miles in about 75 minutes - the length of Sam's baseball practice. Any longer than that and someone isn't going to be happy. Maybe I should give Sam the keys so he can drive himself home; I'll run behind him.

Gait

Of course it has changed since running barefoot. I noticed it right away from the first run out the door. It was weird and uncomfortable, and if I thought too hard about it worried me that I was doing something wrong. A month ago it felt a little like getting back on to a bike after not having ridden since you were a kid. It was familiar, fun and a little like flying. It feels that way because it is the same gait I had as a child. Now when I think about it I don't know how I ever ran any other way.

My feet don't hit the ground running, they caress it and glide over it. I don't think it is possible to have a heel strike pattern in bare feet, at least not for very long. I suppose part of it is self preservation - no part of me wants to do a heel strike on to a sharp rock. I feel every stone and bump while running now, so I tread quickly and lightly over the trail in fast short steps, and in my mind my feet are wheels spinning over whatever surface I happen to be on. In short my new (or should I say old) gait just feels right.

So I also play soccer three times a week or so and of course I wear shoes, cleats in fact. And my gait doesn't come as naturally in cleats as it does in VFFs (bare feet). At 39 years old I am often hard pressed to match anyone under 25 in a sprint down the pitch, at least for the first 45 minutes. As an experiment I played the last game as if I were barefoot - it took some thinking about but was very doable. I just had to rethink my starts mostly from big lunging power strides to something more in line with how you would want to get from 0 to 60 if you had no shoes on. While hardly scientific I noticed that I was able to run more of the game up and down the length of the field, but even more importantly those 25 year olds were now within reach. I caught two guys I never catch and blasted past a third that should have been even. Maybe it was that I had so much more energy because of a more efficient stride, maybe they were hung over.

One thing is for sure, the new/old gait kicks ass.