#78Where we're going we don't need shoes...
By James | posted on 23 July 2009 | 1 comments
It is early morning in Vauxhall park and the sun has barely risen for the day. I remove my socks and shoes put them in my bag and hide my bag under a large stone seat in eyeshot in the middle of the park. I whip out my mp3 player and start my carefully prepared playlist featuring many tracks from 80's movie montages, the first being Going the Distance from the Rocky Series, and start stretching to loosen up. Rolling up my trackies until they're above my knee and nice & tight I begin my light run staying completely on the balls of the feet. This was the first time I've taken barefoot training seriously and didnt know what to expect.
After 10 minutes of jogging I discovered my new found appreciation of grass and loving the feeling of it between my toes. Unfortuently this feeling didnt last too long when I decided to seek out harder surfaces to toughen up the soles of my feet and pose more of a challenge. I already have calluses on my hands and have befriended them greatly, finding them to be reminders of tough training sessions in the past, so now it was time to see how my feet would react to similar stimuli.
With gentle consideration of my every stride I changed my route in the park so I would run over 20 metres of concrete and 10 metres of gravel. This made the rest of the run very interesting. I was able to have a greater liberty with foot placement when running on grass that I couldn't on concrete. Every stride I took I had to completely absorb the impact of landing on concrete, albeit a very little impact as my pace was slow, due to my unfamiliarity. Gravel was a slightly different challange as I had to land softly and always land on the ball of the foot closest to the heel and rock up towards my toes rather than springing from step to step as I did on the grass.
After another 10 minutes I decided I had sufficiently adjusted my technique to face running at a faster pace and completed another few laps of the park but this time I decided to sprint as fast as I could along the 20 metre stretch of concrete. As I approached I gradually increased my pace but found I couldnt reach top speed or even come close. Some thing was holding me back and after the run I realised it was the soreness in my feet.
Fast forward to two months later and I've modified my first session now including side stepping, sprinting, basic vauls & rolls and moving on to precisions and catleaps but with the same 80's soundtrack. Now I only train barefoot in the main training spot in vauxhall which features small shards of glass, uneven paving stones, small twigs and berries everything one could hope for to tough up the soles of your feet. I find it extremely uncomfortable to train in my normal trainers and now feel very pleased when I walk away from a day at Vauxhall with blackened soles.
Labels: Training
About the Author : James1 Comments:
There's nothing like barefoot running. Great feeling. Heartily recommend the book 'Born To Run' by Chris McDougall to anyone who is interested in knowing more about its amazing benefits, and the dangers of 'specialist' £120 running shoes...
By 
Dan, at
7:32 pm, July 24, 2009
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