Here in Indiana our Trick or Treating has been moved to Nov. 1 due to the monsoon-like rain today. But of course, rain doesn't stop the barefooters. I got in a 4 miler early this morning but wasn't able to dodge all the raindrops. That's two days in a row running on wet pavement and now I have a nice blister on my right pinky toe to show for it. It was a little disappointing when it showed up after my 8 miler yesterday and I was surprised that it didn't hurt too bad to run on it again this morning. That completed my month at 140.6 miles and sets me up for my next record breaking attempt which I'll discuss a little later.
Overall this was a great month and the highlight has to be the Highway Half Marathon on Oct. 12th. This 13.1 mile race was a "one time only" race on the as yet unfinished Highway 31 bypass. It's always nice to run without traffic to worry about, plus this was one of those unique experiences I just had to be a part of.
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| Garmin Download of Highway Half |
The road is a limited access highway so we entered and exited the road via an on-ramp and runners then had their choice of running on the slotted concrete or the asphalt shoulder...of course, as a barefooter, I chose the asphalt which was much softer and many of the shod runners did as well. My goal was just to try and better my BPR in the half marathon which was set earlier in the year at the Indy Mini Marathon. Thank God it didn't get too hot by the end and I was able to get the new PR by 11 minutes, running an 8:08 pace for a 1:46:29. Yeah! A new barefoot PR!
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| New Barefoot PR!! |
I actually had an even faster pace going for the first 11 miles but the last couple miles did not have the asphault shoulder and the combination of being tired, the slight uphill, and running on freshly cut concrete slots, slowed me considerably. Still I was able to hold on to 33rd place (of 394) and 4th in my age group (of 28). Hey anytime I can go barefoot and still break the Top 10%, I'm definitely happy. I was the only barefooter at the race and got many comments, before, during and after the race. The race director (my good friend Terry Townsend) warned me at the beginning "Watch out Dan, there's lots of rocks and glass out there" to which I said "I won't even feel them" but he was right, there was a lot of debris. The glass was weird and seemed to be in little piles, almost like it was a sand being mixed into either the concrete or paint. For the most part it was avoidable, but sometimes the debris forced me back off of the asphault and onto the concrete. Still I was very happy to be able to keep up that fast of a pace. It feels really good to have some of my speed back, finally, after 2 years of building the distance and foregoing the speed (a definite early disadvantage of barefooting). The only damage was a small blood blister on the ball of the right foot, just below the pad, shown here.
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| Small blister from Highway Half (one week later) |
The next week I pretty much took it easy running just 28 miles and followed up the next week with a 48. On Oct. 24 we had our first snowfall and I did a 10miler that morning. Another fun run that week included a run to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. That Saturday morning literally as I was walking out the door to do my 8 miles or so, I got the text from CVS that my prescription was ready to be picked up. So I decided to grab my ID and "co-pay" and run the 4 miles to the pharmacy (into the wind), go to the "drive through" window and then run the 4 miles back. What the heck, I figured, I might as well save some money on gas while saving money on shoes! My good friend Ben was the pharmacist on duty that day and he just laughed...he told me later that the pharmacy technician asked him afterward "Did that guy not have on any shoes?!"
So during this 48 mile week I also made the decision to try going for one more record breaking goal for the year. As some of you know, I set out earlier to run 1000 miles barefoot for the year, but of course I've already reached that goal. I'm currently at 1194 miles for the year. So now I'm trying to hit 1500 by the end of the year. It's still a pretty big goal which will require an average of 38 miles per week. That may be tough to do since the weather gets kind of iffy in the months of Nov. and Dec. but we'll see what happens...no promises!
Happy Trick or Treating and Stay Safe Out There on the Roads!
Barefoot Dan
Monthly Mileage for Oct = 140.6 miles
Highest Temp Run for Month = 73 degrees, lowest = 28 degrees
