Last week of April

Distance 52.6km [total: minimalist 269.6km: Barefoot 2674.9km] Week 17

Wednesday, 25-Apr. 18.5km

ANZAC Day holiday and I can hear the early morning rain, there to greet the people at the dawn services for the war remembrance. Wen eventually I got out of bed I was surprised to find it wasn't as cold as I was expecting as I collected something from the car.
I went out for my run at around 10am, the tide was low so plenty of nice flat beach to run on. I had a tailwind running from Grange to Semaphore and the running felt great. Maybe the extra days rest on the Monday helped. I covered the outbound distance in a time of 41:43. Coming back was much slower as I headed into the wind, I recorded a time of 58:17 but that included an extra 1.5km. For the first time since summer my feet felt cold as I ran, a sure sign that winter is on it's way and I have to put up with 6 months of cold feet.
I measured my leg turnover towards the end of my run (17km) to see if it had dropped significantly to give an indication of fatigue, I was surprised to find it was 88/min (single foot), only around 2 steps slower than the target of 90. I thing my stride length would have shortened, my hip flexors felt sore. Maybe more core training would help.
The SARRC (local running club) published the details of the IBRD in their newsletter, will anyone turn up? I have no idea.

Thursday, 26-Apr. 10km

Back to running close to sunset, well, when there is a sun to set. It was hidden behind clouds out to the west so it seemed quite dim when I started my run. The tide was coming in and fairly high this evening so I stuck to the pavement. The ground was cool, I couldn't detect much warmth from it but it must have been 15C or else my feet would have started to go numb. The last kilometre I ran on the beach, it gave me the opportunity to run fast in the lapping tide. I have to slow down running on the roads at dusk as I can't see the path too well. I'll have to pack in more miles at the weekend rather than after work.

Saturday, 28-Apr. 16.3km

A beautiful Saturday morning, clear blue sky, fresh cool air. If all winter mornings were like this I would be quite happy. I changed my usual Saturday run by running south to Glenelg as I had already done the northbound run midweek. This was mainly a beach run with a couple of km on the pavement. The tide was out so I had a vast expanse of beach to run on. I get so relaxed when I'm running that I feel like I could close my eyes and drift off to sleep at times, I'm sure that wouldn't end well though. At the end I did a short timed run between the jetties to see what time I could manage after running 14km. It wasn't too bad, I recorded 10:43 for the last 2km. I've not had any inquiries about the barefoot running day next week even though the SARRC placed a piece in their newsletter that went out to 500 people, I thought I might have got a few calls. I sent out emails to all the Australian members of the BRS to see who was still active, out of around 30 emails I had a bout 5 replies, most of those were interstate.

Sunday, 29-Apr. 7.8km.

Another sunny morning greeted me, coaxing me out to run along the foot path surrounding the lake. The water was as still as glass as I slowly picked up speed  on my run. I felt very relaxed as I paced along the concrete path, my mind wandered onto a video I came across on youtube with a guy discussing barefoot running, coming across with authority saying that it's ok if you are running on the beach or grassy field but don't run on hard surfaces like pavements or concrete, what an idiot. There is nothing I like more than sprinting along the concrete stretch at the end of my run. I just kept pushing incrementally harder, the strides were longer but importantly the foot was still landing under the body and the cadence was still 180+. It seems the faster you run the lighter you feel until you almost get that floating feeling, that would have never happened to me wearing big clunky shoes fitted with stiff orthotics. There are a lot of people out there claiming to know all kinds of things about barefoot running when in reality they know very little at all.

Neil