2 More Little Barefoot Miles and I'm Ready

Ready for what?  Why, I'm ready for the 1st Annual New York City Barefoot Run and I'm really looking forward to running around that island a couple of times. Foot issues -- so fretted about over the past few blog posts -- have been completely resolved. I think my strategy this week worked.

Although I had upped my mileage to 3.75 for the past few runs, I opted today to run an easy -- ha-ha-did-you-hear-that-easy? -- 2 miles.

Yup, I think that ought to do it.

For many many years, even during the years I was dormant and longed to run again, I retained this idea from my earliest running days that a runner had to run every day.  I thought if you skipped a day, you were on the road to becoming a non-runner.  In fact, I even at one time in my life thought that if I stopped running while I was standing at a corner waiting for a traffic light, that my whole run didn't count.

Weird.

Sometimes a person such as myself can form an impression like that and not quite realize it is operating as a force in the background.

Then, last year, when I was trying yet another time to get back into running, my sister recommended Jeff Galloway's run/walk method.  After reading his information, I was introduced to the notion that one could derive benefit from running and taking walk breaks.

I was actually loving this method when I was doing it last year.  It shook me free from all the "rules" I had made up in my head about running and how it should be.  It showed me a lot of possibilities.  It gave me options and flexibility, and helped me understand how speed might develop.

Anyway, another concept that I was exposed to while using Jeff Galloway's 1/2 marathon training plan for the ultimate beginner was that less could be more.  I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw on the training plan that one could develop one's running on just three days a week.  That, of course, was an absolute minimum plan.

I'm neither recommending, nor not recommending this particular plan to anyone by writing about it in this blog today.  I'm just bringing it up because it was part of my personal path to getting some new ideas into my head about my running.  I had to shake up some of the set-in doctrines I had formed when I was a young runner a-many years ago, and trying out these schedules of Jeff Galloway's was very helpful to me.

And that had something to do with the fact that I ran a shorter distance today.  It's kind of an act of faith when you've been increasing distance to step back and do a shorter distance.  It's a kind of trust in the body -- that the miles you have put in consistently are in there.  That you are X amount fit based on the work you have done and that X amount can be maintained and is yours.

I can't finish without telling you how beautiful it was out there.  Here's what I saw:

See you all on Governor's Island!