Ran the President's Cub Night Race last night. Got to the race and registered barefoot, with a few people I know asking if I was racing that night without shoes. Nice to be asked. Talked to some people I have not seen for a while and told them I was running a lot barefoot. They all brought up the "fear of glass" that has become so prevalent when discussing my new-ish barefoot habits with them. I wore my NB 150's for warm-up and the race. Ran pretty respectably for not doing a lick o' track work this year as yet. Immediately removed my shoes for the volunteers to easily cut the zip-tie holding my ChampionChip onto my left shoe. I jogged about 1.25 mile cool-down barefoot on the streets of Millburn, probably my longest run on pavement without footwear! I realized this course would be excellent to race barefoot because the streets were 100% smooth asphalt, and seemed like they were just repaved this spring. But here is the important observation: the bottoms of my feet felt like they were cushioned, just as much as a pair of lightly cushioned running shoes. I could really feel the softness, perhaps because of the exceptional quality of the road surface. I am thinking that the past year of barefoot running has put enough skin on the bottoms of my feet that the skin is actually providing cushioning like the rubber soles of running shoes!
Second observation: Early in a barefoot run my feet are more sensitive than later in the run. I think it is both because of the nerves acclimating to the feelings, and because of better form after being warmed up.
After I cooled down last night, the President's Cup post race party was great. Not enough food, but plenty of free Sam Adams, music, dancing, good conversation. Did it all barefoot and a lot of people asked about the barefoot thing. They shut the free beer down at about 10 PM, so many running club friends went into Charlie Brown's (the race/party location is their parking lot). I went in barefoot and no employees cared. One thing I had to keep reminding myself as I made a couple of bathroom trips, however, was that urine is sterile...
Running various amounts of my mileage barefoot since July 2004. Now that it's mainstream, I am no longer crazy, but maybe I was among the visionaries.
3 comments:
First, to try to convince you that I'm cultured, here's a peotical link: http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2296.html
Next, healthy urine is sterile. The shoes that track around there certainly are not, not is urine from someone with a UTI. There is a reason that shoes are required/strongly encouraged in some places. Frankly, I suspect the health dept. would cite the restaurant for permitting you in there (though I can't really understand why a foot is less hygenic than a shoe, especially one that may have stepped recently in %&$*!).
Wayne
Scooter,
You are just playing into the urban legend that it is illegal to be barefoot in certain eating establishments in NJ. did yoiu ever notice that the "Shoes must be worn" signs are gone from everywhere? Here is the NJ legal truth:
http://www.barefooters.org/health-dept/NJ.html
you got to be nuts to run barefoot on surface, country boys run on grass that is ok.
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