Calf tightness

Distance 21km [total: minimalist 124km: Barefoot 452km]

A bit of a break since I last did an update to my progress.
Just reviewing what I did last week.
On the Sunday of last week I did some training drills on the nearby field, it was a bright sunny day, cool but not breezy.
I trained for half an hour doing jumping, hopping, balancing with 50 metre runs in between.

Rain was forecast for later in the week with Monday being the day with the best weather. I headed out to the beach and had a great run, down towards the river on the sand and back along the road on the way back.
The beach portion was tough as the sand was very soft and well trampled but by taking small steps with a fast cadence, you can almost get that floating above the sand feeling.
It takes longer covering the distance on the soft sand and by the time I got to the river it was getting dark so I decided that running back along the road would be better. It always takes a couple of minutes to adapt to the harder surface and then it becomes automatic.

I intended to book in for a leg massage on the Thursday but found that the therapy place that I go to were shut up until the end of August.
So, as Thursday was now free I decided to go on a longer run, this might have been a mistake but my mind had been made up as the weekend was due to be cold and wet and now the sun was out and it was a mild evening.

I ran on my circular river/beach route setting off from home at 5pm, it would be a 12km route.
When I used to run with shoes I would normally have to stop after 1km to rub my shins and stretch, I would then be fighting off shin soreness at regular 2km intervals, I could maybe shake the pain off after about 8km.
Now, wearing my VFF's (didn't want to be barefoot in the dark) I just ran all the way to the beach without a pause, no shin soreness or tiredness.
But then, calf tightness strikes. I was aware of it as I neared the beach, I stopped to stretch but it was too late, I would not be running back.
I was at the farthest part of the run. I had a 6km walk back.

The soreness was not bad enough to stop me walking so I would grade it as a No.1 strain on a scale of 3.
I walked using the pose method of letting gravity pull me forward. It took me an hour getting back.
It felt good to get out of the cold and dark, I'd cooled off during the walk and only had a t-shirt on when I left the house.

I rested over the weekend, just doing gym work. The calf feels good again now but I'll keep off it for another week, maybe just doing some light drills on the field.
Two steps forward one step back.

Neil