Running Barefoot on Cement and Asphalt: 60 minutes with Tristan

There was a pretty big article in the paper today about barefoot running. Pretty cool. I think it was in the Daily Herald. Saturday my goal was to run 60 minutes barefoot on cement and asphalt. I did it.

For those of you who haven’t been reading my previous posts this is why I’m doing this. About a year and four months ago ish, there was a book that came out, Born to Run, that challenged traditional shoe-wearing running. I was given this book by a friend and started running barefoot at parks and on grass. I got a lot of remarks that I was crazy or that it was all good unless I wanted to run on cement and asphalt; if I wanted to do that then it would be impossible.

I distinctly remember a comment on Facebook where a friend of a friend wrote that he “highly doubted anyone could do high-mileage barefoot on the hard stuff”. So this year, about a month ago, when running wasn’t going how I had planned I decided that since I didn’t have anything to lose I would test that out.

Just like new runners have to build up to long distances when they first start running, that’s how it is with barefoot running and this was kind of the approach I used. I started running 3 times a week. Day 1 was 5 minutes, Day 2 10, Day 3 15 and so on until this past Saturday I did 60 minutes barefoot around town here in Provo, UT with a buddy named Tristan. (If you know Provo from the Creamery on 9th, down to Center Street, over to 500 West, up to Bulldog, over to Canyon, over to University Parkway, up that to 9th, back down and a little extra at Kiwanis Park) Thank you Tristan for running with me. I’ve definitely had blood blisters, regular-type blisters, sore feet etc. but I love it! It feels liberating and enjoyable. I’m not running as fast as I would normallly run, but that’s okay with me. I'm taking it nice and easy, sometimes hard when I get ambitious.

I'm planning on running a half-marathon down the Provo River Trail. You can join me and you don't have to run barefoot. Does anyone have a GPS watch I can borrow? That's how I'm running fearless nowadays: Using body as an experiment for science. Run fearless!