Modified Barefootin’
Out of guilt and pressure I place purely upon myself, we ran the course we call the loop today. Traditionally, the loop is a more difficult course, filled with hills of varying size and runs about 3.5 miles (our new measurements added an extra .25 miles to the length, so now I can feel superior about my old runs. I went farther than I thought!), somehow nearly all uphill.
We ran the modified loop, where there is a mile of semi flat and lower sloping hills because I am still a weenie. I ran the full twenty minute/two mile minimum, plus extra, then ran another mile home. I expected to have to stop early, crippled, but my foot issues went away after the first mile and almost didn’t raise any complaint at all for the rest of the distance. I am amazed that I was able to finish. Usually I can barely drag myself back. I was not ruined for the day with exhaustion. I wasn’t sore the next day, either.
I was in new shoes, very simple, cheap, one dollar sneakers we call Tai Chi shoes. They have almost zero padding and no fancy cushioning features. We no longer believe in these things. In fact, we believe quite strongly that more comfort and features act to cripple, in addition to being ridiculously expensive.
I’m quite surprised that I’m not exhausted from the effort. The rest days helped, as did the temperature, a full twenty degrees cooler than the day my partner ran and then desperately clawed through the liner to get into the pool. The weatherman on television insisted that we wouldn’t sweat unless we ran a marathon. He was mistaken.
The tool I had that I do not always have access to was the ability to keep myself going. Part of that was due to cooler weather, part due to trying very hard to slow myself down to where I could mostly get enough breath, and part was due to the disabling of whatever switch I have in my brain that triggers my sudden stops- no matter how hard I’m telling myself to continue along. I can’t explain why I can do it some days and some days I simply don’t have it…that mental force of will to make myself keep lumbering forward.
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