45 minutes
I had another good run at lunch today. 45 minutes of good stuff where I tried a couple of new things.
The first thing I tried was to run barefoot at the beginning instead of at the end of the run as I have been up till now. I reversed the order because I felt the fatigue one experiences at the end of the run is not something I want while running barefoot – at least, not this early in my barefoot running career. Why? Because right now, fatigue = bad form = blisters. Perhaps I will not get blisters once my skin is better conditioned but, for now, blisters are what happens when my form slips.
The other thing I tried was something I learned from the Barefoot Running Yahoo Forum. Someone there said to curl my toes up a bit while running barefoot. This has the effect of lifting them enough so they don’t rub against the ground and cause blisters. I haven’t had a big problem with toe blisters, but I thought it was worth trying anyway so long as it did not compromise my pose method form – which it didn’t seem to.
The combined effect of today’s experiements were good. I felt very little friction on my feet, no new blisters were formed and the old blisters didn’t get worse. In fact, things went so well that I ended up going against my first experiment and ran the last kilometer barefoot with no harm done.
In total, today’s barefoot mileage was four kilometers. Progress continues to be a good thing.
Comment by 
Wednesday July 20, 2005 @
You keep refining your methods…glad it continues to work out.