Welcome back!

As promised – PICTURES!

First, I took photos of how I look now in the hopes that later on in this experiment, I will look markedly healthier. Let’s take a look see, shall we?

So, this is the front.

And this is the side - wow, my posture is terrible! Sorry, Mom...

I don't really have much to say about this other than, I had better look better in a few months.

Ok, I have some work to do on the physique, but all that depends on the foundation. How do you like my injinjiâ„¢ stripy socks? I know, they’re hot! I am wearing the Sprint Vibramâ„¢ Five Fingers.

Now, it’s what you’ve all been waiting for:

THE FEET!

Ok, here's the real deal. The left foot is the major pronator. Hence the issues will probably lie with that foot.

Boy are those unfortunate feet or what?

Ok, so let’s talk about my biomechanics. On the first feet picture, note how the left big toe splays out? Well, I mentioned that in my first post, and it is because that is foot that had the lateral sesmoid bone removed. Your foot has two tiny bones, the sesmoid bones, that sit in that big fleshy area just below your big toe. They are sitting in there just like the patella (or knee bone) sits in the knee joint. I think they are used to absorb shock or something. Anyway, because my inside one was removed, I have been told that my toe will continue to splay more and more as I age. I have no doubt of that, but I think that by keeping a careful eye on it, I can somehow try to slow the process and maybe stop it with exercise and sheer force of will.

The next part of my biomechanics, my feet are very fortunate to be in as good of shape as they are because when I was born, the bottom of each of my feet was bent all the way around to touch the inside ankle bone. I wore tiny casts for the first six months, and then shoes that looked like they were on the wrong feet. So, I do not have traditional “flat feet”. I have an arch, but when I put weight or stress (like pushing off while running), my foot flattens out and the arch falls or gives up, as I like to think of it.

Now, onto the first run:

Friday, February 19, 2010, I knew that in order to use the Five Fingersâ„¢ to run, I should probably start on a surface such as gravel or grass. So, I set off to run in a park with an approximately 3 mile loop. My goal for my first run was 1.5 miles straight, which I felt was a little optimistic since I had not been running in a long time.

I started out on grass, but I did not like the squishy wet of it. So, I switched to the gravel path, which was marvelous and fun to feel through the bottoms of my shoes. My first observation was how easy it was to adjust to the surface I was on. I could move around puddles and adjust how my feet were hitting the ground much easier.

Running in gravel or on grass is essential for me at this level of the barefoot game as during the parts where I had to hit the pavement, I could tell a lot of jarring and very bad things were happening to my feet.

I tried to maintain a forefoot strike, but I gotta tell ya, that uses a lot of different muscles than a heel strike. So, I switched between forefoot and midfoot strike through the run as a heel strike is truly uncomfortable and a little unnatural in the barefoot running for me.

I finished my 1.5 miles with a 9:22 per mile average pace. Woohoo!!! Yeehaw!!! As a matter of fact I felt so good that a walked a little, and then did a couple of approximately 100 meter sprints for fun.

The aftermath:

The next morning my ankles (mostly the inside just under the inner ankle bone) were killing me! I walked completely stilted. It was very painful. However, not in a I-just-pulled-something-really-badly kind of way, but in that I-just-had-a-great-and-challenging-workout kind of way.

I took Saturday and Sunday off, and prepared to run again on Monday.