So I cheated a little on my own program yesterday and did a complete curcuit of the Common, instead of cutting it short and sticking to 4k. This then takes me up to 5.5k and it was easy. Although I did get a blister on the ball of my right foot by the end. This is to be expected as the skin on my feet needs to harden up. It’s the third one I’ve had in this process so far. These are deep tissue blisters which I won’t be popping. They’ll just go hard and the skin will eventually be replaced with tougher skin.
This got me thinking that there are basically three physical things that needs to adapt on my body to barefoot running:
- Calf muscles – the first thing you notice (ouch!)
- Balls of your feet – the skin there needs to toughen up
- Arches of your feet – the musculoskeletal setup need to toughen and adapt
Or, if I was building this into a training program with catchy mnemonics, it would be ABC. Although I guess as this happens in reverse it’s not such a good mnemonic after all.
Anyway, I think my Calves have now adapted, and will continue to adapt as I step up the distance. The skin on the balls of my feet are currently adapting as I noted at the start of this post. And as for my Arches? Well, I can certainly notice them now. What I mean by this is that, yes they are sore the day after a run. Nothing to worry about I think, just part of the process. I read somewhere that as far as the muscuoskeletal setup of the feet go, they will take about two years to adapt to barefoot running. So I guess I’ve quite a while to go with this yet.
So the key lesson here is that it’s not just your calves that you have to worry about in making this conversion. And if you think you’ll convert to barefoot running in a matter of weeks – think again.
So it’s little wonder why current competative runners are still running with their padded trainers on. With their whole careers based around heal-strike running in comfy footwear, they simply have too much invested to be able to take two years out to retrain their body for this very different form of locomotion. I now firmly believe that it’s not really possible to make this conversion whilst continuing to run using a conventional heal-strike gait. Hence why professional runners are not embracing the barefoot running revolution… yet.