Today I did a 5K road race barefoot, there's a first time for everything right? Maybe...not.
My wife Nan, myself, my sisters Emily and Ashley, Emily's husband Adam and my friend Steve Wilson went out to run. It was a fun way to end the year. Nan and I warmed up taking a 1.5 mile loop around the course and I was wearing a lot of clothes and gloves and my fiveFingers with socks.
Then I stripped off all my clothes except for my really short shorts. It felt great actually, It was annoyingly hot with all the clothes on. It was in the 20's I think but it felt good. The weather was really calm and the course roads were really clear.
We got to the start line after almost everyone and I was really surprised to notice that I was the only one around in bare feet. I mean come on, where was the competition? There were plenty of bikini sporting ladies and speedo wearing guys, but they all seemed to forget to take their shoes off for the coldest runner competition.
Needless to say, and skipping to the end here, I won the award for the 'coldest runner'! A plaque! Hurray, it was so worth it. Mmmmm, ok , maybe not so much, the jury is still out actually, we'll see how the bottoms of my feet feel tomorrow.
Anyway, the race was really enjoyable. I didn't wear a watch or heart rate monitor or anything which was kind of cool for a change. I just tried to not go out too fast. I ended up falling in about 50 feet behind Dane the 52 marathons in 52 weeks guy who wrote a book about that. I didn't know it was that guy until I chatted with him after. I couldn't quite catch him, but he said he had a slight advantage on me because he had done a 50 mile warmup run earlier that day. Advantage?!? I guess you could say that. Or that was his not so subtle way of saying he can totally kick my butt. But probably he was just using it as an excuse to share his running accomplishment, which is pretty amazing in my opinion, that he can run a 19 something 5K after a 50 mile run in the 8 min pace range. I thought that was pretty cool and kind of inspiring. He was dressed in short compression shorts and racing flats I think. I ran behind him the whole time and just tried to keep him in my sights and reel him in but I never could catch him.
But I felt great. My legs felt fantastic, my heart felt great, and my feet felt great until the very end. And I didn't go out too fast. The whole time I could tell I was getting faster. Until the end which is uphill, and my left ball and toe were starting to get sore. I was definitely not used to running that fast barefoot. And because the ground was cold and I was racing I had a harder time keeping my feet from rubbing weird. I have never attempted to go that fast barefoot before, I'm pretty sure 20 degree weather wasn't the ideal weather to be testing out new barefoot speeds.
As I finished the 5K I felt great, my time ended up at 19:39 which I was really pleased with. I thought I would be a minute or so slower than that being barefoot, I didn't know what to expect. And I know I could have gone faster if I had worn my FiveFingers. I couldn't really push the pace any more at the end because of the couple sore spots I was getting in my feet.
Nan finished a couple minutes ahead, first for women in 17:48 I think.
Now in the aftermath my feet are pretty tender. They felt fine until the end of the race but it was about an hour after that they started to feel really tender on the pads and big toes. We'll see how fast they can recover from that one I guess. They are getting a lot better now. I think I'll stick with the FiveFingers in that cold of race conditions in the future. The race felt great, but my feet had a pretty painful spell about an hour afterward.
***next morning***
Ouch! Here's my plan from now on when I run barefoot: listen to my body.
My feet aren't very happy with me right now, because I didn't listen to the small hints of pain signals my body was sending me.
The pads around the balls are really sensitive and I have a blister on each of my big toes. When I ran 8 miles and then 10 miles barefoot over 2 days recently, my feet were slightly sensitive after day 2, but I didn't get blisters and they didn't hurt to walk on. This time after 3.1 miles they are SUPER sensitive.
Remind me to listen to my body when I run from now on. To me, the pain and potential injury of not listening to my body is not worth getting a faster time. I'd rather stick with proving to myself what I can do without hurting myself.
I'm pretty sure my feet will feel better pretty quickly, but I still don't think its in my best interest to run faster than my feet are ready for.
It was a fun race though. And now I have more experience and understand my body and current fitness level better.
***Later on at night***
My feet feel pretty good now and my blisters have died down so I'm good to go for a run with jun and scott tomorrow in the ff's
***Next day***
My Feet felt great, and I went for a 6 mile trail run in the snow with no problem and no sensitivity. I guess the sensitivity was just from a bunch of my skin that I wore off my pushing too hard and my feet recovered within a day. I'm feeling pretty pleased with that.
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