Watermelon Classic 2010 – My First 5k
This is my second summer of road bicycling thanks largely due to my friend and coworker Chris Leon’s influence. Since I began cycling, I’ve had it in my head that I’d like to do a du/triathlon at some point, but never really did too much to make it happen, other than buy some fancy running shoes.
A couple of weeks ago, I began (very) casually running. A couple of times per week, just a few miles around my neighborhood. Due to some pretty intense unrelated exercise I’ve been doing over the past month or two (more to come on that at a later time), running has been much more approachable this time around. I dare say I’ve been enjoying it!
Unfortunately, I told my brother as much, and he promptly signed us up for a 5k race that was scheduled for the same weekend I had planned to visit him for the 4th of July. With 3 days of fever preceding race day, I(mostly) ran it and finished it. My practice track (neighborhood) is flat, so the hilly parts of the race track proved to be the biggest challenge. My time was far worse than I had hoped at ~31:30. Nonetheless, it was my first 5k, so I’m proud to have finished it.
The most interesting part of the race, however, was a guy that stood next to me at the starting line. He had no shoes! None. Nada. Not even those shoe/sock things that are just supposed to protect your feet. I thought, “Man, that guy’s nuts!” and forgot about him…
…until two days later, when my ankles and shins were killing me from the run. I attribute this abnormal post-run pain to my quicker-than-normal pace and all of the hills. So I decided to do a little googling about the barefoot thing, fully expecting to find some niche communities of believers. Sure enough, I found lots of them. Some for the idea, some adamantly against the idea. I saw a number of accounts from runners claiming switching to barefoot running solved many of the aches and pains in their feet that I was having after this run.
The most compelling article I came across was an interview of Ken Bob Saxton by LJWorld.com. Kenny B, as I choose to call him, has been called the “godfather of barefoot running.” As can be seen in the article, he is clearly a believer in the benefits of running barefoot. He didn’t seem to be trying to convince me that it was better though. He did convince me that it was worth trying.
And so I decided to try it. Last night after my normal workout, I walked outside and ran to the end of my neighborhood and back. It was just a couple of blocks – there was no sidewalk, just asphalt. We’d received a light rain a couple of hours before, so the road was wet and (relatively) cool. Afterwards, I noticed my calves were a bit tighter, but the tops of my ankles and the lower parts of my shins weren’t hurting at all. I think this was because I was taking smaller, faster strides. I’m not entirely sure, but I plan to experiment more. My feet didn’t hurt, I didn’t step on any rocks (because I was aware and scanning the terrain), and I didn’t have any of my pesky neighbors waving at me like I was a friendly neighborhood jogger (instead, they stared at me like a homeless person that had just robbed someone and was trying to get away).
