Late spring runs

This past week has been good. Ran Mon-Wed-Friday about 1 3/4 miles each day, all totally barefoot. Each time the rest of the day was okay but got better each time also. Just some hot spots where there are callouses. That's about where I was before my injury last fall, but this time has been more gradual so I should be okay. My route for this is about 3/4 mile dirt road and the rest pavement. The pavement has what they call chipseal; the roads were regular pavement but rather than put a whole new layer on, a coating of liquid tar is followed by a liberal coating gravelly sand. That was last done about two years ago, so it's not as rough as it could be. There was a very short but glorious section rounding the last corner of the run of very smooth tar. Last fall it was like running on porcelain. This spring most of the chipseal sand has worn off but so has that smooth tar spot the sand skipped. Wednesday's and Friday's run had a few puddles left from an overnight rain. Very nice to run through.

Some of the callouses are due, I think, to the condition called Morton's Toe. My second metatarsal is slightly longer than my big toe's metatarsal. This means, if you land on the forefoot too much, that bone gets all the weight first. Good form and extra gradual increases in distance and speed are key to dealing with it. Good form means lifting and placing the feet rather than pushing off and pounding, and landing more midfoot than forefoot, and keeping knees bent, and good posture, and, and, etc. The callouses are right along the arc of the second two metatarsal heads.

As for the other callouses, one is on the mesial posterior of my left big toe pad and the other is on the outside edge of my right little toe metatarsal head. I assume these are from slight differences in the way my feet move on the ground, which they shouldn't be doing with correct form. That's something I have to work on I guess.