I haven't been blogging for a while, but I want to get back into it again. I haven't been running all that much for most of this year. I will estimate that I have averaged about 20 miles/week this year so far. So basically, I have been running enough to get some health benefits from running but not enough to stay in good shape. This past semester at school was really hard on me as well, which didn't help things either. I imagine that I could run a 5k in about 17 minutes right now, maybe a little faster but not a lot. I did run 2400m on the indoor track (300m no banks) in 7:34 at the beginning of May, but I am in bad enough aerobic shape right now that I don't think I could hold that pace for a longer distance. I am starting to try and get back into shape again. I have decided that in order to motivate myself again I need to start racing. Running races is fun, and it will give me something to shoot for. I ended up running 44 miles this week. Nothing spectacular, but it is slightly ahead of where I was last year when I was in a similar position. I have also been experimenting with running barefoot on pavement, and walking around barefoot as often as possible. I want to get a better idea of what it feels like to run barefoot when you have thick calluses on the bottoms of your feet, but in order to do so I need to get thick calluses on the bottoms of my feet. I am doing this because proprioception of the foot is known to be impeded when wearing shoes (or socks for that matter). The question I now pose is: does proprioception decrease when thick calluses form on the foot, or do these calluses simply allow an individual to avoid injury while still allowing for complete sensation of the ground? Personally I feel very unnatural when running in my minimalist shoes (Altra Adam) without the inserts that they come with (with the inserts in the shoes I do not have this problem), however I always feel very smooth and fluid when running barefoot (provided that the pavement is sufficiently smooth to not cause pain). It feels like my form changes when I run with or without the minimal shoes (without the inserts in them) and I suspect it is due to changes in proprioception. So nothing scientific here, but it is fun to try and understand some things a little better by experimenting with myself.
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