Some good distances

Distance 56km [total: minimalist 275.6km: Barefoot 2952.6km] Week 23

Tuesday, 5-Jun. 10km

It's getting chilly now. Less than 3 weeks before we hit the shortest day and my spirits will lift as I know that it won't get any dark any earlier. At the moment it is around 5:10pm for sunset. When I used to live in England it would be getting dark an hour earlier than that. I doubt I would have been running barefoot in the winter there, even if it was as mild as here.
I did a high heart rate run, keeping it up in the high 130's to low 140's. The run was mostly on the road except for the last 1.5km where I switched to the beach so I could run fast. It was near dark but just enough light to see the stones on the beach whereas on the path I would have to run slower due to visibility.

Wednesday, 6-Jun. 8km

A shorter easier run today. I tried to keep at a more steady speed tonight. I'm still finding the pavement temperature fine to run on, I still have feeling on contact, it is not cold enough to numb the senses.
I've almost finished reading Matt Fitzgerald's book Run which I'm finding much more readable now. I went through a period when I was making very slow progress with it but my interest has picked up when he describes how to improve your running grace. Basically you have to run further, faster and lighter. It sounds like stating the obvious but the more you run the better your running becomes. I may have also got an answer to how I got injured last year, he mentions it is usually a change in the type of training, something different from the usual repartition. As the injury developed just after I came back from running in the UK I had been doing much more hill running, that was the trigger, then stretching the injured area at the gym then caused it to worsen until breakdown occurred.

Thursday, 7-Jun. 7.8km 

A run around the lake tonight before sunset. While concrete is nice to run on in the summer because it is cool, in the winter it doesn't absorb much heat from the sun and so it quite cold underfoot. It is always nice to find small stretches of darker coloured surface and feel the slight warmth get soaked up by my feet. I only had a T-shirt on tonight and it was pretty chilly by the time I got back. I ran with a fellow runner tonight but didn't manage to catch up once I took a 1.5km detour.

Saturday, 9-Jun. 22km

Once more I managed to do a half marathon distance and I knocked a minute off my time from last week. It is always a little hard to compare just by time alone as I take quite a few detours while running along the beach. The detours are around large patches of weed washed ashore at high tides, there are also trapped water pools draining out into the sea which I skirt around and also areas of soft sand near the river outlet. It was quite cold overnight, getting down to 3C, I waited until 10am before setting out on my run, I did consider the Vibrams but when I got to the beach I found the temperature quite tolerable. This time I didn't have to do any extra running after a night out at the pub.

Sunday, 10-Jun. 8.2km

To finish the week off, another trip around the lake running on the cold concrete, colder than on Thursday as the sun had only been on it for a few hours. I must be a regular sight running around the lake now, I see plenty of regulars on their morning walks around the lake. I always make an effort to say good morning and smile rather than grimace, like the average runner carries on their face. No wonder people thing that running is a torturous activity, it's not sold very well.

Neil