Day 8 - 1 mile & What I'm Doing Wrong

After an encouraging run on Saturday which brought to an end my first week of barefoot running I ventured boldly into week two. The received wisdom in running circles is 'never increase your mileage by more than 10% a week.' This is good when you're marathon training, but difficult to accept when you've dropped back to a mile day in order to retrain your running brain.

 

I did a few calculations and discovered that, were I to follow this rule, it would take me 28 weeks to get back to my usual weekly mileage (around 30 miles). That sounds like a long time. I've committed to doing this properly, so I suppose I shouldn't complain, but I don't really want to have to wait that long. And I'm quite worried about how much fitness I'd lose in the meantime. So I wondered what would happen if I just tweaked that rule a bit, and allowed myself a 20% increase each week. 14 weeks. Much more appealing.

 

I hadn't quite made my mind up on that, but 1.2 miles today felt reasonable, especially since I haven't yet been experiencing any discomfort. So I set off on a 2 mile warmup and arrived at the same flat stretch of road I'd used on Day 1. Every time I do this, I have to stash my trainers somewhere. Fortunately there's a handy spot under a bush, beneath a wall, by a stile that does the job. The only people likely to spot them are ramblers. And if you can't trust ramblers, who can you trust?

 

Trainers suitably stashed.

Throughout the warmup, I'd kept my iPod playing with my 180bpm songs*, and concentrated on keeping pace with it. And when I began running in the barefoot shoes, I did the same, again finding the cadence much more natural then in the traditional shoes. But this time, and for the first time, I noticed my right outer calf was complaining after 0.4 miles. I had already decided I would do the run in three sections, with walking in between, in order to give my calves and feet a little recovery time within the session. So I walked, rested a bit, and then set off again. On the second rep I ran slightly shorter, and found increasing discomfort in my calf. And the same again during the following rep. Until, with 1 mile complete, I decided I should call it a day. There was no sense in pushing too hard and damaging something.

I was frustrated that I was finding it so difficult to run even one mile. I'd done my exercises, stuck to the rules etc. I thought I'd been careful, warming up over a couple of miles, taking things slowly. But then I realised I hadn't really been careful at all. Because, in my eagerness to adopt this new cadence, I'd done it during the warm up on both of the previous occasions. And this meant I was running on my toes. For the whole run. So I'd actually done two 3 mile sessions, which was far more than I ever intended to do. No wonder my calf was sore.

Now I have to decide what to do. If I keep up some mileage by doing warm ups, I think I have to deliberately avoid forefoot striking during that part of the run. And I have to accept that my primary aim at the moment is to build strength. The adaptation to the different running form will only come once I've built up the strength to sustain longer runs in that style. Until then, mixed mode is probably the way to go. I'm annoyed I've foolishly made my calf sore, but at least I can now report on the effects of self-massage over the next couple of days. Should be interesting

*Today's playlist:
One by U2
Call and Answer by Barenaked Ladies
Through it All by Matt Redman
Big Mistake by Natalie Imbruglia