Barefoot on the Appalachian Trail

Hello Barefooters,
I took it pretty easy in the month of September.  I really needed a bit of a rest after trying to kill myself in the month of August breaking my weekly and monthly totals from back in my shoe wearing days.

Above the NOC on 13 mile hike with Fritz

I basicallly just ran what felt comfortable each day and tried to nurse a couple of slight injuries from all the overuse of the record breaking.  The method was sucessful and after the first two weeks I felt like I was right back to normal.

My big run for the month was actually just an ad hoc day.  I went out on my twins Megan and Sarah's 13th  Birthday and ran from the bus stop in the dark with my headlamp.  About 2 miles into the run I decided to try to run a 13 miler in their honor.  That is the neat thing about barefooting, you can just go out for a 3 miler and end up running 13!  My other motivation was that I knew the following week would be on the Appalachian Trail and would probably not include that much "actual" running.  The 13 miler at least gave me some respectable mileage for the month.  That being said, I really only ran about 59 miles for the entire month!



Feels so GOOD!!


But the last week was very eventful with my MAN-cation to the AT with buddies, Steve, Fritz, Bill, John and Rob.  We started out the week at the NOC (Nantahala Outdoor Center) in North Carolina.  Our trip included hikes and white water rafting in SC, GA, NC, and TN.  The white water was exciting to say the least.  You can see some examples of how NOT to do it at the end of the blog.  We definitely were not rafting professionals (and it shows!)  But we had fun swimming and getting pulled back into the boat. 

Bill, Fritz and Dan at lunch stop on first Full Pack day

For the week I was able to rack up 60.1 miles on the AT and actually did 12% of it barefoot!  Yes, that was 7.2 miles (spread across 5 days) barefoot on the rocky, root-covered ups and downs of the AT.  It might sound painful to some, but believe it or not I was actually looking forward to the barefoot section each day just to get out of my sweaty klunky hiking boots.  It felt good to actually FEEL the trail instead of pounding my toes into the ends of my shoes.  I ended up with 3 pretty good sized blister on the inside of my toes, not from the barefooting but from the shoes!

I am hoping the blisters heal up in time for my next race which will be on Oct. 12th in Kokomo IN the Highway Half.  During this race the participants will be able to run a "one time only" half marathon 13.1 miles on the as yet un-opened section of the new Highway 31 By-Pass (or as we call it the by-pass of the by-pass) before it opens to traffic later in the year.
Well, I'll let you know next month how it went.

Happy Barefooting,

Barefoot Dan

Monthly Mileage for Sept. = 59 miles (not counting hikes)

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