Go slow to go fast.

It was in the low teens this morning in Salt Lake.  

I met up with my good friend Danny, we both happened to be in Salt Lake for the week from out of town.  We had a really easy enjoyable run for close to 2 hours.  It was great.  It's crazy how fast the time flew by since we were catching up on stuff and chatting the whole time.  I felt like I could have kept going for a long time at that pace which is a good feeling.  

I'm currently training to be able to run 30 miles on my 30th B-day in February and I don't care at all about how fast or slow I do it.  My only goal there is to build up the endurance to comfortably do that without needing a lot of recovery and without injuring myself.  Here are the stats for today:

13.1 miles - 1:54:07 - 8:43/mile avg - HR: 136 avg - Really flat, easy run along the JRP trail, redwood road, and the legacy trail for a bit. Some sections of the legacy trail were slower going due to snow/ice/crud all over the trail, but most of the run we clear asphault.

we went to the bountiful rec center and i just did a few easy miles and lifted weights and did pullups and stretched.  it felt good.

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.

Did a fun snow covered trail run on the Bonneville shoreline trail in Draper with jun and scott.  Nice to meet you both!  That was really fun and it was a gorgeous morning with the full moon over the awakening valley with fog settled below us everywhere.

I only slept 4.5 hours which is not enough for me, and then on the drive down to the trail the food I ate the night before began wanting desperately to exit and it was not a pleasant drive.  By the time I met jun and scott at the trail I wasn't feeling well at all.  We started up the trail but I told them to go on.  Then I lost 3-4 pounds next to the trail almost instantly and felt almost instantly better.   I covered up the mess for the benefit of myself and others who would be passing by there multiple times and then went back to the car to charge my garmin and rest for a few minutes.

Then I headed up the trail again.  I was really slow because I was tired and my body felt weak from fighting off whatever was in the bad combo of food I had eaten the night before.  But my feet felt great and totally recovered from the barefoot new years excursion.  

 I met jun on his way back at about mile 3 and then I started going faster to keep up with him.  I was warmed up by this time and it felt great.  It was a really enjoyable run, I really like that trail.  My feet felt great in the FF's but the traction on those things is non-existent which makes it a little challenging on the super steep parts of the trail.  My next shoe purchase is going to be the FF treks.  They have a lot of traction and have great reviews as a trail running shoe.  

I ended up doing less than mileage than jun and scott, here's what I did:

6.2 miles - HR: 139 - Elevation: 1435ft - Time: 1:19.