Of chocolate chip cookies and mercury poisoning

There is nothing better than tucking into a choc chip cookie after a run in the knowledge that nobody can say you didn't earn it.

No, scrub that, there is something better - the second cookie.

I was so lazy tonight that I didn't bother taking off the running shoes I wore to work. Dump the bag and back out the door. Short and sharp - 5km to East Perth for a drink, then back to the park for 12 x 80m sprints, then roll home barefoot. Nice to finish a run wanting more.

The differences between the VFF technique and true barefoot only become apparent once both styles begin to settle. I find that I land on my outer toes in the VFFs and rotate my heel round those toes till I have full foot contact. Doing this barefoot is awkward and abrasive. I know I do it in the VFFs because of the distinct wear pattern on the soles and the scrapy sound I get when the path is wet or sandy. I guess barefoot forces the complete ball of the foot to touch down and spread the load as widely and evenly as possible. Whether I ever make it to full barefoot I don't know, but I would need to get over my hippity hoppity over the smallest inconsistencies in the path. How people run trails barefoot baffles me.

Here are my VFF (bikilas) after 500km, all on smooth-ish paving.Note the wear under the little toe and right in the center of the ball of the foot.

If I can arrange to get leave on Wednesday afternoons, I think I shall switch the Wednesday WAMC run with the Thursday program run, since WAMC is likely to end up fairly competitive. I will keep Tuesday as a short-ish recovery run, and Thursday will become short and sharp, allowing me to jump in with the 14 or 18km group at the club. Friday will stay as rest.

And the mercury poisoning? My brother (now residing in Beijing), reminded me today of the dangers of heavy metal poisoning due to the fish I like to drag out of the river being the top of the local food chain, mostly subsisting on poo-eating molluscs (OK, not poo, but pollution). A quick sweep of the ever-trusty web shows three polarised local schools of thought (are three poles possible?) - the ones who don't keep anything they catch, for the sake of the river; those who eat anything they see, legal size or not and; those who are sure that incidental contact with the Swan River water will lead to certain death or a severe itch.

Since I eat the fish and drag the kid around behind the kayak, singing gleefully in her lifejacket, this warrants further investigation. Probably not on the web.