Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Sockless running

I must start getting ready for the day the night before. I was scrambling to organize all of my stuff for the day in the pitch black of Monday morning. I wanted a good solid bike ride but was having trouble figuring out if I needed to drive into work. Work is going to be demanding this week and I needed my “replacement desktop laptop” (- you can read that as an eight pound 17 inch brick) with me. I decided to drive – that would cost me about 20 minutes on the bike.

Once everything was sorted the bike felt really good. Legs were fine even considering the 50 miles the day before. The plan called for more hard gear low cadence strength training. I am a spinner by nature – these workouts are challenging to me. I went for the ride on my tri bike (no race helmet / no race wheels / no cyclometer / no watch) and clicked off a solid 20 minutes in just under an hour. I felt strong.

I ordered a pair of those super fancy Zoot shoes the other day – they were last year’s model on close-out. I had not run in them yet so I brought them to the gym for a fast sock less run. I warmed up on the treadmill for half a mile and then ran three progressively faster miles. I felt good. This was a hard workout but I was never out of my comfort zone – I was never out of control. I had a really short lunch today – I had to cut the run short by a quarter of a mile. It felt good to run fast!

WU 0.5 mile
mile 1 - 6:53 HR AVE 156
mile 2 - 6:40 HR AVE 167
mile 3 - 6:31 HR AVE 173
CD 0.25 mile

The shoes worked fine for that short distance, however, when I was done the bottoms of my feet were on fire – I assume from the friction. I have not run sockless in a while – It is time to get my feet back in condition.

On a side note – Yesterday, I spoke with my master-gardener father on the phone – he is really a special guy – hope he comes to visit soon. Dad – I love you! (I know you read this everyday!)

2 comments:

Kristin said...

I have to get ready the night before, otherwise I'd end up at work with one shoe and all mismatched :) I'll be curious to see how you like those Zoots. They get very mixed reviews.

Anonymous said...

I run in Zoot Energy 2.0, the newer update shoe this year. This was my first time running in the Zoot's. I had no problems with blisters this shoe and no hot spots. I did pick-up a pair of the older style Energy's and ran on a treadmil for about 50 mins one afternoon. No blister; although, the bottoms of my feet felt like they were on fire. I went on to workout on the bike then back on the treadmil. I only ran 10 more mins before my feet started to burn again. I removed them while I was cooling down and found that the bottom of my feet were very red. It must be some sort of friction on the insole. The new version, I have yet to have any complaints.