I’ve finally built my barefoot base up high enough that I feel confident in beginning to build up my distance. As of right now my base mileage per run is about 1.5 miles around the neighborhood. I’ve found a route that I can continue to add distance too just by adding a .5 mile loop to the beginning and ends of my runs. This will allow me to very easily increase my mileage without having to guess how much I’m adding. One obstacle that I’m going to have to work around is the Oklahoma heat. Temperatures consistently rise over 110 and they stay well over 100 until late into the evening. This means my runs need to be in the morning or in the evening. This isn’t that big of an obstacle other than I love my sleep in the morning and like to have a social life. Although running is becoming a passion of mine and I can’t imagine the struggle to get out and run being a very difficult one. That’s one of the best things about barefoot running…it is so rewarding and addicting that it is hard to take a day off to let your feet rest, and that is a major problem that most new barefoot runners face. They go out and run and it feels so good that they go too far too fast and they end up injuring themselves and blame the running as the culprit. That is something that I have tried very hard not to do and I firmly believe that I have transitioned the right way. I honestly cannot wait to start my increases of .5 miles every week until I hit 5 miles per run. This is a modest increase and will allow me to make minor adjustments as I tweak my scheduled runs and will be very easy to notice if I’m increasing too fast. I think this is the safer route as opposed to building the distance up quickly over a few weeks. I’m super stoked.
Until next time,
Puff
Barefoot Puffin 