No running these days. I was up in Denton visiting a friend. I went walking around on hot concrete and ended up with large blisters on my feet so it may be a few days before I want to move around much at all. Will update when I get going again.
Ran 'round once, walked half, sprinted half, walked half and sprinted half again. I didn't hydrate properly today so I was rather tired out. Sprinting hurt a bit as I couldn't quite keep up with myself. It was no worse than the burning everywhere else.
Did about the same thing I did yesterday. Loved it. I'll definitely get somewhere with this.
I don't run. I just don't. It doesn't work for me. Or I'm not doing it right. Or something. In any case it's just ridiculously difficult and I can never be bothered trying. I know there's always some difficulty to be worked through, but this shit borders on impossibility. I figure I'm not cut out for running.
Someone posts a thread on Zoklet about 'barefoot running'. This sounds really fucked up so naturally I go to take a look. He's some anti-consumerist recreational strength trainer who's totally pushing this way of running. He says that running with shoes is the cause of orthopedic injuries and improper running technique, not a way to correct them. He cites several barefoot runners, including people who aren't super-amazing Southern Africans who did it all the time anyway. Hmm.
I click some of the links he posted, including barefootrunner.org and runningbarefoot.org. I'm further intrigued. Having been going barefoot for a couple of weeks anyway, I decide I might as well try running -- maybe this is the way to do it. I post on the Zoklet thread that I'm going to try it that night, to ensure that I do. Now if I don't someone will notice.
After work (2330) I'm already in my PT shorts. I grab my MP3 player, loaded with someone's promising workout playlist that I found online. I walk barefoot about a mile to the high school down the street as a sort of warmup for both feet and body in general. I glance about nervously for a while before hopping the fence around the running track. I would just run on the sidewalk like everyone else, but being barefoot, I had to pick through more broken bottles and patches of sharp pebbles than I cared to. It isn't too much trouble, though. After taking a moment to inspect the running surface -- it's a sort of hard rubber, rough for traction but not entirely abrasive, yielding slightly to a hard press -- I waste no more time and take off. I quickly find that, running this way, I simply can't get away with my half-assed "Oh I don't really want to be doing this but I have to" short-step jogging. I have to run at a decent speed or my heels strike painfully on the ground as I land flat-footed.
When running barefoot, the ball of the foot lands first, as opposed to running with shoes, where the raised heel strikes first. At some point we got it in our heads that this is the way we should be running. As I run, I land on the balls of my feet. If I'm not running very fast, I have time to fall on my heels after that. This isn't a bad thing; rather, it's the next stage of the shock absorption, followed by calf muscles and knees, but it feels too much like jogging to me. I'm here to run.
I run relatively quickly because of this, my heels usually not touching the ground. I do notice a spring-like bouncing in the feet. I'm not just pistoning around with rigidly held feet. Rather than taking great strides and landing with my leading foot outstretched, I land with my feet under me, keeping an upright posture. To maintain this, I must maintain speed; to maintain speed, I must lessen contact with the ground; to do this, I must keep my feet moving no more slowly than the ground below them, or I end up slowing myself.
While not entirely sprinting, I seem to fly around the track before stopping where I started to walk a bit and evaluate what I just did. I'm hardly winded; considering that this seems to be a quarter-mile track (one with a football [US] field in it) this surprises me. I would have struggled my way around it in shoes. I walk about halfway around, then run around again. This time I'm a bit more exerted, but not tired. I walk halfway and run again, halfway, and, with the voices of old coaches urging me to Finish Strong, I sprint the last stretch. At this point I'm exhilarated, not beat, but I decide that I might take it easy the first time.
I do a cool-down walking lap, stretch a bit, and walk home, basking in this "runner's euphoria" thing I always hear about. The rest of the night, I feel quite entitled to sit on my butt at the computer.
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