Life’s a beach!

Well it’s the Monday morning back at work after a week of holiday…  Boo! (well It was never going to be great was it!)

Well I have to say following 2 weeks “working” on the Olympics I needed a holiday!

I have to admit running was going on the back burner as I’d spent too much time away from the family but I did pack my Merrell Trail Gloves and Luna’s.

I wore the Luna’s “socially” for most of the break but got up early on the Wednesday for a sneaky 8 mile beach run. I’d always had one eye on a beach run and what better to wear on sand than flip flops! (so I thought). The sunrise was amazing but as soon as I started I noticed my calves were far too tight. I’ve noticed I’ve started being slack on warm ups and cool downs and I really need to start stretching better.

The last run pre vacation was a 22 mile off-road run which was a recce for the Essex Way (82m) run which I planned to run at some point. I wore my Magnum / Hi-Tec V-lite’s as the Merrell’s still felt a little tight but for some reason they wrecked my legs and I was still sore.

Anyway back to the beach! Apart from the pain from the last run, I hadn’t accounted for the movement of the flip flops on the sand and the gradient so the toes were taking a hammering from trying to stay stable. Also even though stones in the luna’s isn’t normally a big deal, there’s stones and there’s a British beach!!!! Every other step was like running on razor blades. 8 slow miles later and I knew I’d been working hard.

Well I took it easy for the rest of the week until the weekend. I decided that I really did need to sort out a barefoot shoe that I was 100% comfortable with so I rang Field and Trek in Chelmsford which is having the longest closing down sale in history and reserved a pair of Merrell trail Gloves in 9.5 Ash colour. My others are fine but these gave me the confidence I needed to increase the miles.

I wore them around the house for the rest of the day then decided to christen them by running 5 miles to Baddow the next day. I decided that “out of the box” they should be ok and even though this went against all the rules of new footwear I threw caution to the wind. I ran slowly to Baddow then ran a 5 mile road race which included a cheeky 50m ford. I then did 4 miles of off-road training and decided to call it a day.

Due to the distance and the heat I carried my small 12 ltr Inov-8 race back pack. This contained 2 litres of energy drink, some wet weather gear and a change of clothes in case we ended at a pub J. Well after I got home I noticed that I had a few more “scars” than I normally had… The new Merrel’s performed great but I had managed to blister one of my op scar slightly (not bad and could of happened with any shoe). Also later I noticed my lower back was slightly sore? I asked my wife to have a look and I had a row of tiny blisters I guess from the pack? I’d worn this pack loads of times over distance and with the same shirt but I think today it decided to raise slightly resulting in the “war wounds”. Nothing too bad though but I’ve decided to try and look for some “all in one” short / vests for use when carrying packs in the future.

Well that’s it for now! I did have another conversation today with some people from our running club on the subject of barefoot running (many who had read “Born to Run”). Lots of people expressing a desire to try it!

Speak soon…