This blog is to chronicle the story of how I have come to run barefoot and whether or not I will continue. First some background.
I have run off and on since high school when I was terrible at it. In gym class no one coached you how to run. In the USAF, you had to "run" faster than 1 mile in 20 minutes to be considered in shape. At least by then I could run quicker than that. Sometimes if it was a cold morning, they let you do 1/4 mile in 5 mins. I had an overweight sergeant who walked the mile, or whatever distance, while smoking and he passed.
Recently, for two or three years my left shin had been aching and no changes to my running form helped. In researching online, barefoot running kept coming up and the low/no impact aspect seemed like it could help avoid injury. I hadn't gone barefoot much since I was 12 or 13 and even then I didn't run around without shoes. So last summer I started trying to condition my feet.
I did 3 or 4 weeks of just walking around the house and yard on nights and weekends when I could. Then i started running 25 or 50 feet at a time. I was still trying to keep up with my regular running with shoes. I had New Balance 790s, which were really light weight and didn't have a huge heel but still had some cushioning and heel height. By September, it just didn't feel right to be running in them, like bones had shifted a little and with the shoes they wanted to shift back. Also, I was going through all my regular walking around/going to work shoes and seeing if they could be worn without the cushy insoles I got for them. The bad news for me was that it was getting cold and I needed something on my feet due to the Reynauds.
Then, in the first or second week of October, after jumping up to 1 1/2 miles too quickly, within 50 feet of setting out one morning I got a sudden moderate pain in my left mid foot. At quarter mile it didn't get any better but it didn't get any worse either so I headed back, still running. I must've been really determined to run so I ran a bit in the old shoes, but still no better and maybe a little worse. Eventually I examined my foot and found the discomfort around the head of the 4th metatarsal. I could feel both ends of the bone through the flesh and push and twist it around without any pain, so it didn't seem broken, but still I'd need to rest it for a while. So much for having to deal with the Reynauds. I switched my exercise to the eliptical machine I got years ago when I had plantar fasciitis and gave up running. (That's a whole other story but got over PF with Superfeet insoles and rolling my feet over a bottle.)
In the mean time I discovered Invisible Shoes and the idea of making my own winter shoes was planted. I didn't buy the kit from them but found a soling supplier online, since I had some ideas I wanted to try.
1/1/11 was a warm day here in NH - in the low forties so I tried 1/2 mile in the IS. My foot had been feeling better but the discomfort came back, maybe not immediately but later that day. Finally toward the end of April I tried icing the foot and that seemed to be helping a lot. I started running short intervals in the IS with socks and got up to about 6 x 1200' before it started getting warm enough to go without socks and gradually add more time BF. Icing twice a day seems to help; once after a run and once in the evening. There's no discomfort while running, during these short distances anyway. The other thing I've noticed: I was probably running too much on my toes - not letting my heel land firmly - and landing a little too hard. There's definitely less discomfort if I really pay attention to those points.
So that's where I am now. I'm up to 1 1/2 to 2 miles three or four times a week and about half a run is in the huaraches and the rest BF. Now it seems all I have to work on is fine tuning my form to reduce blisters/callouses, which means concentrating on lifting and placing my feet and not shifting or twisting them while on the ground.
(Even though this is dated in April, most of it was written in late May/early June.)
