New Year

Distance 72.4km [total: minimalist 329.1km: Barefoot 7072.6km] Week4 (1st - 31st Jan)

Interesting, I think I have lost a posting over the month so I'm going to have to try to do a recall of some of the runs I have been on over the month.
I will have to work backwards from today.

Sun (1st Feb)
Barefoot runners meet which had myself, David and Michael getting together at Henley Beach for a 6km run along the foreshore then back along the beach. The weather on this first day of February was uncharacteristically cold 

Well, today was perfect running weather, around 20C with a moderate southerly blowing when I got to the beach. I did have the idea of running from Grange to Glenelg but shortened it to Barcoo boat ramp as I was hungry and stiff. Today (Sat 31st) I ran 12km. I missed out on my breakfast and ran on an empty stomach as I wanted to get out before the sun got too strong. My legs, glutes and hamstrings were still recovering from a gym session on Thursday so my running power was compromised. I ran 6km then felt a bit wobbly due to lack of food so I turned around and ran back. The outbound run was part along the beach then I went onto the path. Many many runners out today, big groups as well, all good to see.
Wednesday (28th) Another 12km run from Grange to Barcoo, half on the beach and half on the road. It was a late run to let the ground cool off, I went out at 7:30pm and the sun had set by the time I had got back.
One mistake I made was to have a drink of electrolyte formula before I went, I then had to run with a full feeling in my stomach. I think next time I shall have the drink after I finish the run.
Monday (26th) Australia Day.
The national public holiday brought many people onto the beach to play beach cricket and walk.
Today's run was a shorter 7km.
Sun (17th) My regular route around West Lakes that takes me around the lake in a clockwise direction. 
Wed (14th) A 12km run from Grange to the boat ramp at Barcoo Road. Even though the day was of moderate mid 20's temperature the bitumen was still warmer than I would like on the stretch of path from the holiday park to the boat ramp.
Mon (12th) 7km  We had some rain from a weather front that had pushed down from the tropical north. I like running in the summer rain and although I managed to get through most of the run without a downpour it started light but gradually got heavier as I was getting towards the end of the run. Around 10 minutes after getting into my car the rain really came down and I just lay back in my car seat and relaxed, listening the the pounding rain and wind blowing outside.

Sun (11th). A 8.2km lake run with a thrown in Triathlon 3/4 of the way around. I could give a good burst of speed over a short distance to give the impression I could keep this up for an extended time. As soon as I get of the course, I can relax and slow down again.

Neil

End of Year Review

Distance 19km [total: minimalist 329.1km: Barefoot 7000.2km] Week52 (29th Dec - 31st Dec)

In the last few days of the old year I ran a 7km on a windy Monday. A weather change was working its way through and the wind was blowing from the south west whipping the waves up along the beach. I ran along the small strip of smooth beach edge, the tide seemed to be incoming but it may have been close to the turn. I ran to the river mouth then came off the beach and onto the Esplanade path and ran with the wind behind me so had  an easy run back.
On New Years even I went for a run after a doctors appointment, it was, at 11am,  later than I like to run but the weather was sunny and calm and a pleasant 24C.
My main concern is the sun at this time of day, it burns my skin very quickly, even with sunscreen on there are always areas I've missed.
I ran along the beach, crossing the river which was only flowing like a stream. I continued running to the Barcoo boat launch ramp. I did consider going further but then the sun exposure factor was the main concern and the heating of the path. I ran back along the bitumen pathway and it was starting to get uncomfortable on my soles, I had to move quickly and not hang around. The concrete was better but the heat had made my feet sensitive and that began to hurt after a while. I went back onto the beach for the last 2km to cool my feet off.

At this time last year I had run 5632.5km without shoes and now I have pushed that up to 7000.2km an addition of 1367.7km. This is not as many as I was hoping but the reduction was caused by injury and injury that was wrongly diagnosed.
For over 6 months I was convinced that it was an ankle tendon problem. It was only in the last months of the year that I found it was actually the sciatic nerve that was throwing me a false signal. As the nerve was being irritated it weakened the calf muscle and caused pains in the lower leg. The sciatic problem was caused by my lifting workouts at the gym. The discs get squeezed while lifting any weight above my shoulders or heavy rowing exercises.
I shall have to cut these out.
Lets hope this year is a better running year.

Neil

Christmas Run

Distance 28.2km [total: minimalist 329.1km: Barefoot 6981.2km] Week51 (22nd Dec - 28th Dec)

 Well I managed to miss the Christmas Fanatics Run on Christmas morning due to oversleeping. I used the Android calendar to mark the date and send out an alert but the alert was an email rather than an alarm to wake me.
I should have used the clock function which I must have used on a previous occasion as I found an alarm set to wake me at 5:15am. As it turned out I only woke at 5:50am, 10 minutes was not enough time to get ready and down to the race so I went back to sleep for another couple of hours.
Guilt must have got to me so I went for a run at 8:00am, a bit more civilised. I ran from Grange to the Barcoo boat ramp. It was a cool morning and would have been much cooler at 6am so 8am was quite pleasant. There was a westerly wind blowing and I ran through a very brief shower on the way back. It lasted all of 2 minutes. I ran a distance of 12km.
On the Monday I ran 10km from Grange to West Beach. This was a wet run. It was lightly raining on the way down to west beach but increased on the way back. I made a point of keeping off the slippery surfaces but even the concrete was slippery when the rain increased.
I reached Grange and the rain was quite heavy but it wasn't cold so I took my t-shirt off and enjoyed the rain and walking barefoot through puddles while cooling down.

Boxing Day saw me rushed to the emergency department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital with severe pains around the kidneys. The emergency was quiet so I was rushed in and onto a bed and given a intravenous opium dose which eased the pain in around 10minutes. I was discharged a few hours later. It was a suspected kidney stone but that would need confirmation.
It may have been because I was dehydrated due to running in the morning on Christmas Day then drinking alcohol later on, maybe that was too much for the kidneys to handle.

I decided to miss out on my usual Saturday run just in case I caused the pains to return. I ran a shorter 8.2km on Sunday before a gym session.
I have resurrected my back traction device to see if it can rid me of the sciatic problems I have been experiencing over the past few months.
I am hoping to cross the 7000km barrier before the end of the year.

Neil

Hit and Miss Runs

Distance 59.2km [total: minimalist 329.1km: Barefoot 6953.0km] Week50 (8th Dec - 21th Dec)

First run of the week was Wednesday, it was a cool, cloudy and wet afternoon and that was fantastic for running.
I had some back pain during the day caused by, and I'm convinced of this, my trousers. 
Ok I'll explain. It seems today that it is getting harder to find clothes that fit correctly mainly because the 'average' human is now a blimp with spindle like legs and bulbous body. This means someone like me with running legs and slim waist has to have the belt pulled tight to stop the pants falling down. The leg fit is ok but the waist is too wide. This tight belt makes my back ache.
I took one of my super pain killers, these are like nothing I have taken before, they are called Zaldiar and almost put you into a state of floating serenity with a little head spinning dizziness thrown in. I take them very sparingly.
So, I set off on my run at 5pm and I feel like I'm in the zone, I'm not sure if I was or just in a drug stupor. I ran 12km on wet roads that felt great underfoot. I know which surfaces to be careful on due to slipperiness. I ran from Grange to the boat ramp at Barcoo, I could have run further to Glenelg but I thought I better be sensible. I did the nose breathing all the way and felt very relaxed the entire run. If I can just fix up my back, get rid of the sciatic irritation I will be very happy.
I put in another 12km run on Saturday (13th) getting out for the run at 7.30am as it was going to be a warm 37C day. The run was a repeat of the Wednesday route but this time harder work because of the heat. The outbound part was good but I was starting to tire on the way back as the sun beat down on me. I would not be able to run on these paths in another hour without my feet overheating. It was good to finish the run at just after 9am.
To finish the week I ran the lake loop of 8.2km on a warm morning. I felt tired on this run, not much spring in the legs. I had gone to the gym on Thursday and the squats had left me with some residual soreness.

Tuesday (16th) Some precise timing required today as Tuesday is the day a small group of us got to see a movie during the evening. I had to calculate a time line to get me there by 7pm after leaving work at 4pm. It kind of went like this:
Leave Work 4:00pm
Reach home 4:30pm
Change & drive to beach 4:45pm
Run 10km 5:45pm
Home 6:00pm
Shower/dinner 6.25pm
Drive to cinema 7:00pm
It all worked out pretty well but a bit rushed at the end as I spent a bit of time warming down after my run. I did find it hard keeping my eyes open at the cafe after the movie.
Friday (19th) a 10km run along the foreshore, a slight south west sea breeze today. The run was ok, I'm still getting the burning sensation around the calf caused by the trapped nerve in my back.
Saturday I ran only a short 7km today along the beach which has nice and flat as the tide was at it's low point for the day. My legs felt heavy. It was not a good run and I ended up walking the last 2km back.

Neil
 

Injured back

Distance 160km [total: minimalist 329.1km: Barefoot 6893.8km] Week42-49 (13th Oct - 7th Dec)

Well after a long break from writing in my blog I'm back with an entry and a discovery.
My long running saga of tendon soreness around my right ankle has been found not to be an ankle tendon problem at all but actually a referred pain from the Sciatic Nerve.

I mix my running with weight training at the gym to balance the aerobic with the strength. My one weak spot is my low back which I initially injured at the gym 23 years ago. The injury was caused by squats with 70kg+ weight and no warm up, stupid I know but now irreversible. The outcome was squeezed discs at L4/L5, these pressed on the sciatic nerve and I couldn't walk for close to a year.
Eventually is did heal but not back to the state before the injury, it has been an Achilles heel so to speak over the last 23 years. 
Each time I do any heavy spine compressive exercise the sciatica will return. Over the years I gradually cut out various exercises after each one exacerbated the problem, Squats, Calf raises, Shoulder presses, and finally Seated rows.

The discovery that it was a sciatic nerve problem and not an ankle problem came when I began to use the 'Primal' workout idea of doing low reps but the heaviest weight I could lift. I started lifting almost the entire stack while doing seated rows, only 3 x 6 reps though. My workouts went quickly and it felt good until by back started aching. Then to compound the situation, rather than rest it, I decided more would be better, it would strengthen then back......
Well, no it didn't. The disc squeezed the nerve and I took a week off work to recover. The pain though was not in the upper part of the leg but in the back of the lower calf, a burning sensation and weakness in the muscles that control how the foot lands on the floor.

So, the silver lining in the cloud was that the massaging and ankle/calf strength training I was doing was unnecessary, there was nothing wrong with my ankle at all. 
I now knew what I had to work on, free up that sciatic nerve, core strength training and no heavy exercise that could squeeze the discs. 
Throughout the period I have still been running and averaging around 20km per week, sometimes more sometimes less. This last week I have run around 32km in total.

We are in full summer, the heat is here, the hot pavements have returned. I found that out around a week ago when I had a lazy sunday morning in then decided I should go for a run at around 11:30am. The sky was clear and sunny and it was around 28C. The ground temperatures ranged from tolerable on the concrete (40C) up to 50C+ on the blacktop (which I had to sprint over like walking on hot coals).

For my after work runs, when the weather is 25C+ (even at low air temp the ground temp can be hotter than anticipated due to the energy input from the sun) I will run later in the evening closer to sunset. On the weekends I will run in the mornings before 9am.

At the moment I still have the sciatic problem but I have stopped the weight training and am only doing tension exercises, chin ups, planks, crunches. No heavy lifting until it has cleared up. I am still getting the burning in the calf but now I know where the problem lies.

Neil

Sporadic Running

Distance 56km [total: minimalist 329.1km: Barefoot 6733.8km] Week38-41 (15th Sep - 12th Oct)

The running has been sporadic throughout the period as I continue with calf exercises to stabilize my ankle while running.
In week 40 I ran a total of 20km with 6km of that being with my fellow barefoot runners as our regular run on the first Sunday of each month.
The springtime weather has been pretty good and even a touch on the warm side. We have had a couple of days over 30C and that seems to be very early in the season for such warm weather..
The country fire services have moved the fire danger season so that it starts much earlier in the year now.

Week 41 I managed 28km, one run during the week of 7km, then on Saturday a 13km run to Glenelg and back and on the Sunday a run around the lake of 8km. 
On that last run I had a bit of knee pain but I think that was cause by the 3 sets of weighted lunges I did at the gym earlier.
On the Saturday run the ground was getting a bit hot for running on as I made my return journey. Even though there was a cool breeze and the temperature was 20C the intensity of the sun on the bitumen in the sheltered areas was getting up to 30C

In weeks 38 and 39 I only ran distances of 4km each week along the beach 

Sporting my Barepadz by the River

 My first attempt at wearing the Barepadz out for a walk I didn't pull them over the foot far enough. I didn't realise that the big toe had to go all the way through the hole at the top. It was a very tight fit. As a consequence they would keep working their way off my foot as I walked along the river.
I worked it out later how to put them on correctly by finding photos on the net, all I have to rty now is running in them.

Neil

Light running

Distance 13.2km [total: minimalist 329.1km: Barefoot 6677.8km] Week37 (8th - 14th Sep)

Running days: Wednesday Sunday
Distances: 9km 2km

After more resting, no Monday run, I gave it a go on Wednesday and found it no better. I ran lightly along the beach road but after a few kilometres I could feel the tightness return. By the time I began my return journey it was a bit depressing that I had to run at a slow pace so not to aggravate the problem any more. I soaked the ankles and calves in the sea for 10 minutes after the run to see if the cold therapy would work.
I did a gym session from 8.30am until around 9.30am then decided to try some running on irregular surfaces of the sand dune trails at Tennyson. This was exhausting, I didn't feel that fit at all. Running in soft sand drains the energy out of the legs. I did around 3 circuits which consists of climbs on rocky paths, then onto soft sand then onto stony path, then beach, a great mix up run. I got pretty hot and sweaty after that. The ankles seemed ok as well.

Neil