My First Barefoot Race

Today was a big day. I ran my first barefoot race. It was a five miler which I ran at about 9mi/mile pace. Here are the splits with the usual negative split: 9:25, 9:10, 9:34, 8:35, 8:17

I have never ran in rainy wet weather. I seriously considered running the race in vibram given that I had never run on wet surface before, let alone wet humid and hot weather. Theory is that wet surface makes the sole soft making it to much more suseptible to friction and blisters. But there was no problem at all. In fact now I am starting to think that running fast barefoot may be less likelily to cause blister than slow running.

The race itself was a lot of fun. Right before the finshline a cute girl made some complimentary remarks about running barefoot in the race while passing me. I picked up my pace to 7min/mile pace party due to that and, yes, partly due to her PASSING me. But she was pretty fast and I only saw her after finishline. She said something to the effect that there should be a separate category for barefoot running. Now wouldnt that be nice.

Also it was just devine running through rain water puddles and moist cool grass. There was even some guilty pleasure in stepping in the mud. But right around the corner near E95th st, I almost slipped on mud. That would have been a disaster. I must have looked pretty funny trying to balance myself running in dirty muddy surface. But, all in all, my soles were pristinely clean at finishline due to all the water which was pleasant. Everytime I train barefeet I get greyish soles. I put on my vibrams after the race for my bike ride back. I got questions about them which I thought was funny since I didnt run in them. I took the easy path out and mentioned that they are great to run on wet surface since they are designed for kayaking. I think its too early for me to get into serious dialogs about barefooting with other running while I am still experimenting.