bad habits

The first bad habit for this post is an obvious one - this is the first blog for days. I have fallen into an old habit of working late, getting frantic about work, and failing in the discipline stakes. I've missed some blog entries, but more importantly, missed some sessions.

A couple of good solid sessions this week, though the gentler recoveries were missing. The first was the club 14km loop on Wednesday. The pack got a little rush of blood at the start and we pinged off to the turnaround at well under 4min/km pace. Stupidly, I went along or the ride, forgetting all the rules of starting slowly and building form. The pace didn't feel bad at all - a good test, perhaps, but I died badly in the second half, struggling through the last 4km. Simply not enough baseline fitness. Disappointing.

The second run was today (note the gap between?) - this week has been extraordinarily hot - some sort of record for Perth - and today was no exception. I went out, however, to get a feel for a Bibbulmun run (see below). The wilds of King's Park beckoned, so an hour ramble was the plan. Thanks to my sense of direction (or the heat), it ended up being 1:15, before I found the car, and not a moment too soon. At 37 degrees C, with no shade, it was probably a little stupid, but I'm sure I didn't look as sorry as a couple of other runners I saw out there who were not carrying water (I got through 1.5L in the camelback during the run).
There's very little water in the park, and the whole place seems remarkably inhospitable for a "suburban" park, due to the huge mess of trails through it. It's possible to get thoroughly lost amongst them, with today's run having all possible terrain - ups, downs, tarmac, soft grass, hard trails, deep sand (lots of that), rough chipseal and metal grids. It was an interesting test of form in the Fingens - love to be able to try this barefoot one day....

And now the Bibbulmun. I am planning a 30km trail run in a couple of weeks, taking in the start of WA's famous trail, which runs from Perth to Albany. For simplicity, I'll take the first stages (approx 10km stages with a camper's hut at the end) which can be accessible by car, then either make it an out-and-back, or convince someone to pick us up.

Shooby Doo

Today's run has made more more determined to begin some video comparisons of shoes vs minimal vs barefoot. I ran the 12 km loop today in shoes (Nike Bowermans - about as cheap and simple as they come - no fancy bits) and while it was faster, I couldn't say it felt nice.

One confounding influence today was a few solid hours of shovelling rock and dirt and doing some heavy lifting in yesterday's heat, leading to general soreness in arms, shoulders, lower back and hammys.

This aside, the run today allowed me enough time to examine what was going on:

1. It was faster. 12km  in 51:02 - I normally wander through this course in about the 60 minute mark.
   The pace comes from the longer stride, since the shoes afford me a heelstrike (no matter how I try to stay off it), I end up stretching out at a slightly lower cadence than usual. With legs like mine, I can get along pretty nicely.
2. Different hurts - The work hurt (not pain, as such - just the bits that complain) is in the hips, not the calves and ankles. Naturally, this is because I am impacting and not using the giant spring in the back of my legs.
3. Instability - apart from a general feeling of being wobbly with half an inch of foam under me, I notice that I tend to want to twist my feet as they land in shoes. I suspect, based on the feel of simply wearing shoes, that this is due to the toe box of this pair being rather narrow, and squashing my little toes inward. On landing, I feel this pressure and pull my foot round to relieve the toes. This makes the feeling of instability even more noticeable.

So, positives and negatives. Great, if shoes can be fast, then racing in flats will be good fun, when I can afford some. Clearly the minimal and barefoot work is making me stronger and solid on the ground - I have come to enjoy that feeling very much.

I may have finally wrapped my mind around a way to capture some real footage of my stride - I have a handy grabber on a lightweight pole at home, that will accommodate the camera very nicely. This will give me the front-on view that I want so much in real conditions - to show me how my toes come down. I am already comfortable with looking like a twit on the road, so stay tuned...

Tonight I was also constantly dry in the mouth and craving water. I have been hydrating well all day (though there was an altercation with a pair of short blacks earlier this morning). I am choosing to blame yesterday's home made electrolyte drink that tastes like licking a honeybee's butt. Next Recipe....

Overall, though, tonight's run was a pain free, relative straightforward return to the programmed running (told you the notion of 1 minute extra per day wouldn't last!).

Cornbread and home-made gatorade

After a day shovelling rocks and tossing bricks, a nap would've been terminal, so, some domestic creation took off instead.

First : Cornbread. Easy and yummy, as follows:

• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 tblsp baking powder
• 1 egg

Mix it up, cook it. No problem, right? Cook for 45 minutes to 1.5 hours at 180degrees C, right?
No. Try about 30 minutes, or it'll lose the golden part of "golden brown" and look like you found it in a paddock.
Tip for young players: don't take a nap while it's cooking....
It was still yummy, just a bit dry...

Second was home made "Gatorade" type electrolyte drink. Of the innumerable recipes on the web, I chose this one because I had all the ingredients in the cupboard. The objective was to make something that would replenish me after a long run, and not taste like arse.

• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 teaspoon lite salt
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• water (unstated in the recipe, but I made it up to 2Litres)

The verdict. Unless ice cold (when the sensation of cold is rather pleasant), it tastes like arse.
I'm going to dilute it again by half, but I suspect I will reach homeopathic concentrations before it tastes good. I like honey and I like lemons, but at this mix rate, it's just sticky and way strong. If it is heavily diluted, any benefit of the potassium / sodium / sugar component will be rendered useless by the amount of water.

A pleasant evening's "recovery snack", then, consisted of a slice of cornbread and a cup of what looked like something that belonged in a doctor's office.

I survived, but I'd rather feel a little drained after a run......

the sting in the tail

Sunset over Perth city this afternoon was (again) stunning. Orange flares on the clouds changing to pinks and purples over the course of 10 minutes, framed by the city skyline and the river makes for a great run.
Add to the scenery dead flat smooth paths, little traffic and a gentle tailwind, and it's the start of a cracker...


Then the sting: the strongest, most consistent headwind I have ever felt, from 12 to 19km! It was like looking down the barrel of a wind tunnel - no variation, no letup. What a grind.

The outbound trip was good form and relaxed stride, accompanied by an interesting evolutionary biology lecture podcast from Peter at runblogger.com, but the return found a short, choppy stride and no chance of hearing voices over the din of the wind on the earbuds. Several times on the way back I had to slow to a walk and rebuild the form from scratch, dropping my hips and keeping low, with knees bent. As I tired, I found that I was straightening slightly, and becoming too rigid and mechanical in the leg action - locking my ankles in position and staying much to tight, rather than feeling the road each stride. This tension led to a bit of tightness in my lower back on the left side at about 17km, but that has disappeared immediately on finishing - just the tension of that posture, I figure.

I was getting tired toward the end, but I suspect I was also favouring my ankles and being overly conscious of them - will they hurt? / have I overdone it? The trick to this is to stay totally relaxed, and the further I went, irritated by the headwind and wanting to get home, I wasn't.

Another discovery on this run was that the latest batch of power balls (the cocoa / cranberry ones), in the format that I made them, at least, are crap for a long run. They are much drier than the original peanut butter ones and a re real fluid suckers in the mouth - kinda hard to get down, and the cocoa leaves a dry aftertaste.  Next time these will have to see an increase in the wet ingredients and much less cocoa. I could not slot one in 500m before a drink stop and get it away before a good few mouthfuls of water - the dry ingredients make it a chore to get it all in, not choke and chew it , and I found I was stopping longer to get a decent drink in order to simply swish the thing out of my mouth.

All up, it was a good run, brought a little undone by the environment. The ankles are in ice - I suspect they may have some soreness tomorrow, which will be frustratingly due to fighting the wind and losing concentration rather than the speed or distance.

Tomorrow I'm a brickies' labourer....

the sweetest thing

The joy of floating along the road at dusk is only beaten by floating along the road at dusk with the kid.
Spurred on by a goal to run the Weet-bix Kid's traithlon next year, the kid joined me for a 5km cruise down to Windan Bridge - her on her little 6-speed bik, I on my toesies.

Daddy daughter time doesn't get much better.

To cap it off, form was perfect, even with a few speedsters to chase, resulting in a friction-free sole. Even had time to explain the difference in technique to my copilot alongside.

Gotta love running.

a fleeting thought

A couple of thoughts are rumbling through my head this morning as I sit in the office (working hard, of course!), and I suspect they will leak away if I try to hold onto them till tonight.

The first is a chuckle at this blog entry - there's a lot of people in this world very good at articulating what others think...
go to http://bostonbiker.org/2011/02/01/lets-make-one-thing-clear-i-am-not-slowing-you-down/

Second is a general observation of the great uplift in mood, attitude and energy levels courtesy of a pleasant endorphin boost. Last night was great. I'll happily pay the bill for that therapy session.

Third is another link to a series of videos that I hope to replicate with my own style. This page is in French, but the videos comparing barefoot / minimalist / shod are very interesting.
http://www.runmygeek.com/2011/02/etude-de-foulees-minimaliste-pieds-nus.html

Secret herbs and spices...

The recipe for an excellent night:
Cool-ish night, no wind, plenty of stars, empty paths, happy feet, a good set of podcasts (thanks to runblogger.com) and a good day behind me.
A 13 minute run just didn't seem right tonight, so I went for a wander. The usual 12.5km river loop with the last 5km barefoot was the result. Magic.
This was slow - dead slow at 1:19:39 for the loop, but the focus on technique made it a pain-free, blister-free effortless run.  Not quite the "float", but darn close.
Barefooting in the dark seems much easier for me - perhaps I am simply forced to not contend with the years of conditioning to watch for the microscopic spiky stone that will cripple me. A few of the paths back from the causeway and through Burswood were flooded with the high tide tonight, s sploshing through was quite fun (and nicely cooling).

I read this week something about technique being much more important for novice barefooters than toughening feet, in terms of getting started without blisters. Given my short history now of unfocused short run = blisters and focused longer run = perfect, I must agree.

The ankles are up on blocks with some icepacks for a while now - a bit of preventative treatment, but they feel pretty good so far.

The day was good because a lot of ugly work passed across the desk without too much angst and a couple of spectacular medium (no longer short) blacks were authorised by the manager (me) and delivered by the in-house wait-staff (me) by the barista (me).

Yesterday saw a return to old favourites - manning a water station / turnaround point at a club event. This one was a 5km and 16km  WAMC event, with some mighty fast frontrunners belting out the 16k. Apart from the fact that I failed dismally to enable one of the leaders to get any water during the run, it was great. I don't think he suffered serious injuries.....
Nice to be amongst it again.

And , yet agin, fate would have it that my stop was manned by a series of ironmen and women. There's no escaping them.... or the pool....
Sheesh...

cross training

These last days have seen me busy and just a little distracted. The barefoot comeback has progressed well - no discomfort arising in the achilles at all, and the blisters on my soles settled and hardened perfectly after only one day rest.

Lsst night I scared the neighbours yet again with a 1hr torture session on the bike trainer. 5 minutes warm up to 75%, then 90% at 10minutes, then hold till 50 minutes. The last 10 minutes were there to completely drain the tank.
Luckily the tank didn't drain onto the floor, because I needed a little lie down after this one. Spent, but Oh so good.
Rehydrating and refuelling after these sessions is always wonderfully satisfying - so much is burned / drained so quickly, the replenishment is just as intense. 1.5 litres of water, two cookies, peanut butter and honey sandwich and noodles.

I was inspired today to jump back in the pool, and I immediately remembered why I don't swim much.
I only made it through 400m with flippers on before the flippers began to hurt my feet and I was exhausted to the extent of sinking gently to the bottom amongst a cloud of berley.

The degree to which I'm crap at swimming is astonishing. The coach at Yeronga pool told me my technique was sound, but unpolished, so I'm not doing it completely wrong. The novel use of muscle groups and regulated breathing patterns, plus a dash of genetic disadvantage make this a real tough gig.

Previous best though is 1km, so I'll keep at it. Need to find some flippers that fit better (I'm not even going to consider going without) and gently persist. Flippers like these ones at www.shinfin.com would be great for taking any pressure off the achilles and top of foot, but they are a little expensive. (Bloody clever Aussie invention, though.  Did anyone say ironman?   eeek!

Tonight's run was extended to 5km since I wanted a longer period to examine technique, and no difficulty was apparent from the shorter runs. First half was in Fingens, then switched to barefoot homebound. Kept it slow, kept cadence high, with hips dropped, knees bent and pinging upwards to quickly lift the feet - aiming for the "conveyor belt" action and feeling that the purists talk of.

A good result - no pain except for a residual tug on my shins from the flippers and only very minor sensation from the blisters from earlier in the week. The blister location is right in the center of the ball of my foot. My theory thus far is that on landing, my foot is spreading and radiating outward from this point, creating a new friction to this area. This area is usually compressed and pinched upward in shoes, as the toes are enclosed, but now it is contacting and being forced to flatten. I would love to run over a glass plate to look at my sole....

Loving it.

11 minutes

Day 2 of the return. 11 minutes barefoot.
Again felt great. No pain or discomfrt at all - not the achilles nor the ankle saddles from yesterday. A bit of rubbing on the soles - feeling more like blisters this time, though no blood. I'll probably take tomorrow as my rest day, just to give my skin a break and avoid any stops.

Ice, pushups and situps again topped off a good hour workout - handy when it's all so close to home, because the kid can join in and not get bored.

Here's a good part from today:

\
The groovy little cups (they're ceramic, short black size) are from Mebourne - Thanks Rebecca!
A couple of these, plus two new clients very willing to keep me busy, made for an envigorating day.

I'm feeling additionally inspired after chatting via skype with a lady in America who nips out for ironman-distance-plus training every other day. Crikey! Maybe I should drag my lazy butt to the pool and spend some time trying not to drown - the kid wants to go on the weekend, so Sunday morning looks good, after my race marshall duties at the WAMC race.
There's a lot of people in this world with an astonishing capacity for extreme training loads and being polite at the same time.......... I'll work on being polite first.

the pitter patter of tiny feet

Finally, I took my pink size 9's out for a little run. 10 minutes total barefoot and it felt like going home. It was a shame it had to end, because it was starting to feel real good.

Achilles felt fine - the bit that did hurt (and this's new) was the front of my ankles - in an area along an imaginary line from ankle bone inside to anklebone outside, across the front side - just where the skin crinkles a little when you pull your toes up. Wierd. More research needed....... Dr Google?

Home for a big bucket of iced water for the feet - 3 x 15 minutes in ice followed by a round of pushups and crunches each time. Noice. (That's Aussie for Nice)

All this at the end of a day when I got to meet and get excited with two new potential clients and only later realise I had my t-shirt on inside out. Noice again.

Just that little run has brought some bounce back. Amazing how much you miss it and also how amazingly fast you can fall of the top of a peak into a hole when something goes wrong.....

So this is the restart - each day a very short barefoot run to toughen the feet and ease my achilles back to strength. If I stretch and keep up the pushups / situps, then 10 weeks sees me back at an hour on the road and probably alot stronger upstairs, too. (Anyone who knows me would probably note that this can only be a good thing).

Found yet another good blog today (I do work) while searching for good workout music : inthegym.net
It'll take a while to did through the music, but the site includes an incredible list of running blogs. Awesome! Tanya Taylor, who runs the site has put in a lot of work to collate all this stuff - those of us who come after can't help but be thankful for the efforts of the pioneers!

Another night trawling the blogs.......

a short break

I've been a bit lazy with the posting for a few days, since I've done very physical activity. A few rides, both on the trainer and on the road, have kept my legs moving without too much stress on my achilles, and I am almost ready to get out there again. Yes, I know the bike is still pushing my achilles hard, but they don't seem to respond to it at all like the running. I haven't yet made it to the pool for swimming or water running.

Today, though, tragedy struck that could've ended everything:

Tthe coffee machine broke down.

A couple of hours disassembling and diagnosing the problem with the weirdest pump I've ever seen will have me back on the brown stuff tomorrow.  Phew! That was close.

I made another round of energy bullets - recipe again courtesy of the good folks at (never at) homemaker. This batch used agave nectar, which seems to be just about the same taste and consistency of golden syrup, cocoa and cranberries. Here's their link: nut-butter-energy-chunks

And here is a pic of my attempt. These are not as much to my taste as the original peanut butter ones - leaving some aftertaste of the agave nectar, but they're still darn good!

I've also been looking at a superb blog by Pete Larson at Runblogger, who has a lot of great insights about biomechanics (he's an anatomy teacher), barefooting and basically being a runner with a life. One cool thing he has done is analyse some slowmo video of his running style as he has "found his forefoot". This prompted me to look back at a video I took in the first month or so of running in the fingens. At the time, I remember thinking yahoo! Got it right, but now, with sore ankles, I can see that's it's all toes with very little heel touchdown at all.

This week I'll take a new video in shoes and barefoot and put the three side by side. Hopefully, they'll show some improvement.

return of the cankles

Was I right about last night being too long?

Yup.

Achilles are dull again and there is a small amount of inflammation. Nothing but a good sleep tonight.
It was the first day back at school today, so the kid was in a state of hyperactive exhaustion, and that rubbed off quite a bit - we both got a bit droopy on the sofa after dinner.

Here's a pic of my toesies - I colored in where my blisters are from last night - they have hardened and almost disappeared already, but the position is useful for diagnosing my technique - this tells me that I am "toeing off" and the rotation on the ball of the foot that has worn the VFF's continues, even though I'm not aware of it in bare feet.

The not-unpleasant tingly feeling in my feet lasted till about lunchtime today, when being dressed up and polite began to take over and I forgot about more fundamental sensations.

The results of last night have cemented one thing - the program is off, in favour of a slow rebuilding of technique. The marathon this year will be a test of distance and technique. Time can come later.

arse about

Lucky there's cookies.......

I read a lot of blogs and forums about running, and a lot about barefooting. Most of them say "add some barefoot time at the end of your longer runs while transitioning...". So, naturally, I put the barefoot time at the start of a run, and found myself a long way from home with blisters, with a long ugly trudge home in the fingens, which, as I noted last night, feel like clogs after the nudie time. With the blisters, it was also an unnervingly squishy way home, too (no they're not very big, but when you're tired, they feel like waterbeds.......)

So, I've learned something else.

My barefoot form feels light and smooth and, apart from the toughening up required, I think it's quite pleasant. Suddenly my much-loved fingens feel bloody awful! I recall saying "I can never go back to shoes now", when the fingens came along - is this the final step?

About the run: 12km 1:02:16, so not a walk. The first 4km was barefoot and I must say that doing it at night probably makes it easier, because there is no second-guessing of the surface. This run was, frankly, too long, but by the time I admitted it to myself, it was half done. I am favouring my cankles, with some tightness creeping in on the outer sides of my lower calves, particularly during the VFF return trip - I feel it was due to poor form putting more impact into the stride, as I was making sure my heel touched down securely and I was staying off my toes.
2 x 15 minutes with ice, compression and elevation for the evening will tell me how much too far tomorrow.


As for the parallel universe - I have a new (potential) client coming in tomorrow. Always enthusing to have someone new come by. Getting excited about projects (and helping other people get excited about opportunities) is something I do well - doesn't always mean the enthusiasm turns into a job, but it makes for enjoyable meetings.

Instead of trying for a witty image inclusion for the day (I tried taking a photo of my blisters and decided against posting it), here's a link I've wanted to put up for a while - my brother's photography site, while living  in Beijing.....

itchydog images

The gallery is a collection of incredible images - take a look. No, not just a shameless family plug - it's amazing!