AK's writings on running, biking, and other stuff I like to do
11.03.2010
Midnight on Green Mountain
categories: Featured, Running Logs, Trail Runs
tags:

I spent all of about 15 seconds at the summit…my toes were going numb in just my FiveFingers and 6 inches of powder, so I looked out into the cloud I was surrounded in, couldn’t see much, and turned back down the trail.

All day I was itching to go run Green Mountain again, but the day was too busy.  But I used my desire to get out and run as a motivator to get my tasks done for the day, so as soon as the kids were in bed, I was able to knock out some property research in about 1/3 the time it normally takes me and I threw on my running clothes and headed to Boulder at 10:45 pm.

I ran most of the way to the peak this time, if I walked it was only  to scramble or pull myself up the steepest sections.  But despite this, it took me longer than Monday because it was much more slick due to 4-6 inches of snow on the trail.  And it was dark.  It took me exactly 1 hour to reach the summit compared to 55 minutes on Monday.

When I was about 40 minutes into the run, my toes were pretty cold and numb, and I was seriously questioning whether I should go on.   But I really wanted to make it to the summit.  Also, I knew from experience that my feet get cold for some reason when I’m going up steep trails, but going down they almost immediately warm up.  I was hedging my bets and hoping that was the case, but having my doubts and wondering if I was going to get to the top with numb feet and still have an hour of freezing to do on the way down.

Sure enough, almost as soon as I started going down hill the blood started flowing in my feet.  Within minutes my feet were completely comfortable and stayed that way the rest of the run down.  I don’t fully grasp why it makes such a big difference in warmth of the feet going down hill, but I’ll take it!  Toward the bottom, my feet were sweating and it actually felt refreshing to hit the powdery sections again…weird.

6.47 Miles – 1:49:04 – 16:51/mile – HR: 143 – Ascent/descent: 3300 ft (apparently the gps isn’t completely accurate/consistent since it said 3600 for the same run on monday, maybe there are less or more satellites in range at that time of night.)

What a fun run.  Just like on Monday when I turned the final corner and saw my car I was kind of bummed that I was back already.

I took a few pictures at the trail head, and it was pretty interesting to me to see what happened when I adjusted the shutter speed and let in more light…check it out…all these were taken within seconds, at about 1:30 AM…funky how it looks like sunrise in some of them eh??  I didn’t edit the colors on these at all…just decreased the shutter speed to let more light in.

01.01.2010
New Year Goals – and December mileage
categories: Featured, Goals, Running Logs
tags:

I’m really excited about 2010!  This is going to be another incredible year.  I predict even better than last.

2009 was one of the best years of my life.  On January 1, 2009 I was overweight and in a huge amount of stress with a struggling business.

I decided that day 1 year ago, that I was no longer going to let my financial stresses ruin my life and my health.  So even though nothing changed with my business, I changed the way I was living.  I started working out every day and made a goal to lose 15 pounds.

I immediately felt better about my life, and it immediately resulted in progress in all fronts including my business.

I did lose 15 pounds last year, but it didn’t take losing 15 pounds to feel great.  All it took was living differently every day.

Today I’m a much different person than I was 1 year ago, I live a much more healthy, balanced life, and I’m so much more happy.  And my business is thriving now which is a great side benefit.

At the end of 2009 one of the greatest things happened to me though, I FINALLY LEARNED HOW TO RUN!  That was just the icing on the cake of a fantastic year.  Now that one little fact has changed my life completely and opened up new worlds of possibilities and fun goals and adventures that I want to tackle this year and in the coming years.

So here are some of my fitness related goals this year:

  1. Live a healthy, injury-free, balanced life, always taking care of my body and spirit.
  2. Run 30 miles on February 23, 2010 (My 30th birthday)

Things I’m strongly considering doing this year if they can be balanced in with my other family goals:

    -Run a road marathon barefoot sometime this year.

    -Do the Breckenridge trail 10K on July 3rd followed by Firecracker 50 mile mountain bike race again – this time under 5 hours.

    -Run a trail marathon and/or 50K.  This one looks really cool and I’m STRONGLY considering signing up…Golden Gate Dirty Thirty.  Also, Jun’s “Quest for Kings peak” in august sounds really fun.

    -Ride the Leadville Traill 100 Mt. Bike race 8/14/2010 (I hope I get in in the lottery)

    -Do a 50 Mile Mountain trail run sometime in the fall – doesn’t have to be a race, but maybe it will be if I’m ready and there’s one around me at that time.  TheSteamboat Springs 50 looks pretty enticing on 9/18

———————-

Oh yeah, here are my December 2009 mileage results:

108.97 running Miles total

77.51 in Vibram FiveFingers – 31.46 in Bare feet

31.12.2009
Race Report: Beat the New Year 5K – Sugarhouse Park, Salt Lake City Utah
categories: Barefoot Runs, Featured, Race Reports, Running Logs
tags:

Tonight I did a 5K road race barefoot at 11:30 in 20 degree weather…there’s a first time for everything right? Maybe…not.

Total 5K time: 19:39  - total mileage for the day:  5 miles.

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…but here are our amazing plaques and trophies that we need to find a place to throw away or donate now.

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.  She snapped some pictures of me for the history books since I’ll probably never do that again, but this is the best we could do with my fancy camera and all its settings at night with limited time to set the shutter speed and aperture beforehand, just makes me look like I’m going really fast though right?

Now in the aftermath my feet are pretty tender. They felt fine until the end of the race but it was about an hour afterthat 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.

28.11.2009
Change your knowledge and beliefs to change your experience.
categories: Barefoot Runs, Featured, Running Logs
tags:

5.61 Miles – 9:13/mile.

About two weeks ago I tried to run barefoot on a dirt path around the pond by my house.  I went about twenty feet and stopped because it was too painful on my feet.

I’ve since read about people who are perfectly comfortable running barefoot on dirt trails, and even in the snow, without pain or freezing their feet.  Before reading about other people’s experiences my belief was that if it was cold outside my feet would surely freeze running barefoot.  And I had experienced for myself the pain of running barefoot on a dirt path, so I KNEW that was painful.

Then I read accounts from people who enjoy running outside barefoot in all conditions, and it caused me to question my beliefs.  Then I remembered that the last time I tried running barefoot on the dirt was before I learned how to run light with a quicker cadence and less pushing off my feet.  So I began to open my mind to the possibility that maybe I was wrong or was missing something.

I went out to try out some new beliefs this morning, and I can report that I have successfully installed a new version of beliefs that I like better than the old version.  I just returned from a 5.61 mile barefoot run around my neighborhood.  Over half of it was on gravel/dirt trails, the other half was streets or sidewalks.  It was thoroughly enjoyable and I was perfectly comfortable running over the dirt and the concrete.  At first I was really surprised when I took my first few steps on a dirt path and off the cement.  I kept wondering when it would start to hurt.  Then I was back on the sidewalk again.  Ok I thought, that was just a fluke.  That must have been a softer than normal, no rock, dirt trail.  Then came the bigger test, a 1 mile stretch of hard pack dirt and gravel trail through the golf course.  As I got on the gravel I noticed my steps become a little lighter, my arms swing a little higher, but no pain.  I ran on, in a sense of wonder, at the fact that I was running barefoot on a rocky path and it was actually enjoyable.  I passed a guy who gave me a strange look as I smiled and waved at him.

After about a mile I was back in the neighborhood.  Soon I was running on another dirt trail, this time I was really looking forward to it because I found it more fun to run on the dirt than on the road.  This trail went up a hill and I was running through some wet spots, some ice patches, some snow patches.  It didn’t ever feel uncomfortable on my feet.

Then at about mile 4 I was at the pond where I initially didn’t want to run more than 20 feet on the dirt path a couple weeks ago.  I jumped on the path and it felt just the same as all the other paths I had been running on, no problem at all.   There were many walkers whose conversations seemed to reach uncomfortable silent lulls as I passed and they stared.  WEIRD!  Why did it hurt so bad two weeks ago?  I haven’t been running barefoot outside at all since then.  My only logical explanation is that my form is much different than it was two weeks ago, much lighter, quicker, and more smooth.  In any case, my belief about running barefoot is much different today.

But, it wasn’t ALL fun and games it turns out.  As I crossed the dam of the pond, the trail was a lot more dry and hard, with significantly larger marble sized gravel very thinly spread.  It was impossible to dodge the rocks, and no matter how quick my steps were, the steps were pretty painful for a couple hundred yards.  I walked for a few feet, and ran quite a bit slower through this section.  Then it was back to normal trail and it felt fine again.

During the run I decided that this loop is going to be my barefoot benchmark loop.  I was running a pretty slow pace, I averaged 9:13/mile.  I’m interested to compare how I feel in the future weeks/months and how my ‘comfortable barefoot pace’ changes.  My finishing assessment today is that I didn’t get any blisters and in general my feet feel fantastic.  The skin feels slightly tender on the pads of my forefeet, but it doesn’t hurt to walk on.

I feel great that I have broken through the barefoot mental barrier, I’m going to start doing more and more running barefoot.  It was very enjoyable.

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