The silent runner

Finishing the Ashby 5. A bit blurred because I'm running so fast. Obviously.
You can just spot the other two Barrow vests in the background,
those were good scalps for me!

I did a 5 mile race recently, part of our local road running league. All in all it was a good experience. I improved my PB over the distance by over a minute and got close to the promised land of 6 minute miling.

But, more importantly for this blog, I also spotted a chap in barefoot shoes. I was out on the warmup, a mile out and back, running past many similar runners to myself. All displaying some level of pre-race nerves, and far too many clothes (freezing day). There was a general background murmur as hundreds of shoes hit the ground around me. Then he came past. The silent runner. It was as if someone had switched off the sound on this one. He was running in barefoot shoes and as he landed it was not just silent, the absence of noise was so strange that it was if each step muted the sound around it. Then he was gone.

I've read that barefoot running can reduce impact on joints to almost nothing because the foot arch and the calf are such good natural shock absorbers when used properly. By the sounds (or lack of) of this runner, that's true.