Barefoot Trail Transition

So for the last few months my coach, Melissa, finally roped my in to running some trails with the Night Owls & Possums (a branch of the Wooters).  Turns out trails are awesome and the Wooters are a great bunch of people.  This has only taken place on Friday nights and I have been running in my Merrell Vapor Gloves.  I did briefly try bare feet on trails and it did not end well, so shoes it was for now.

Now, with two barefoot road marathons under my belt and a quickly growing love of trail running I thought it was time to have another go of trails in bare feet.  My last attempt I only made it 1.5km in total so as you can imagine I was feeling pretty nervous as to how this would go.  I decided to run the same course as previous just to gauge if anything had changed.  Thankfully it had!

Hitting the small gravel for the first time in months actually felt pretty good.  I took my time and just kept going.  Before long I was past my previous point of fail and feeling good so I was totally ecstatic.  I managed to wind a path down through Glenrock Lagoon to the beach and along the water front to about the 3.5km mark.  I then looped up around the sewerage plant and back up to the picnic table.  This is where it started getting pretty tough.  The road here is a 4wd access road and the gravel is pretty chunky and somewhat sharp.  This was like running on a meat tenderiser.  This stretch was about 2kms long before a final kilometre back on not-too-bad gravel.  Back at the car it was interesting to see the soles of my feet were no worse for wear but my feet were definitely tender.  I'm going to need to try this again!

For the next couple weeks I started doing more barefoot work on trails.  I did a rainy lap around the Possums 10km loop with my mate Duncan and felt great.  Geez we had a good time on that run.  I don't think we stopped chatting the whole bloody way!  The only sore point was my feet but I guess that will improve.

Last week I set out from Dudley Beach on a 15km loop to Glenrock Lagoon and back.  This time I copped a couple rocks under my right arch and a couple under my right heel.  Didn't hurt so bad at the time but I knew I had done some sort of damage.  I threw some shoes on at 11k and finished off the loop.

Turns out I bruised my foot pretty bad!  Shame I didn't get any photos but my arch was black and blue and pressure on my heel let you know it was also bruised.  A few days off made things feel much better.

This week I have run my normal grass track session and another 7km loop around Glenrock Lagoon this morning.  My heel is definitely still bruised as it's bloody sore again now.  Other than that my feet are perfect so I'm hopeful this is just a natural learning curve on my way to a barefoot trail marathon!  Well, for now, that is my goal.  See how things play out over the next few months.