Shoes: barefoot
Tonight kind of sucked. I started my evening off by thinking about changing my route to get out of my neighborhood. There's a green-belt/park with a bike path that is .7 miles away. I figured I would just walk the first .3 miles as a warmup, run rest of the .4 miles until I got to the park and then go another .45 miles along the bike path. Then turn around and run the 1.15 miles home. Totaling 2 miles running and a .3 mile warmup. For whatever reason, I told myself that I needed to do a few runs at this distance before trying a new route, and decided against it. Instead I just ran my normal .5 mile loop 4 times (in reverse because I'm alternating my direction each run).
I increased my pace a little for this run, which ended up being a mistake. The run started off pretty good. I made it about a mile without much trouble. After that first mile, I started feeling some pain under the 2nd metatarsal (the one next to my big toe) on my right foot. It kind of felt like a cut, or like a pebble was stuck to the sole of my foot. I inspected my foot and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, so I kept going.
On my last half mile, the pain in my foot got worse, and by the time I stopped I could feel a slight blister forming. On top of that, the blistered area feels bruised. And after my run, I noticed that my left outer metatarsal feels a little bruised as well. I guess the pain in my right foot was masking it during the run.
I think the issue was caused by 2 things. The first is that I've been forcing myself to run with the "proper" form. I've been trying to make sure I land slightly on the ball of my foot and then let my heel touch, but I think I've been pounding my foot into the ground. The second is that I've been pushing off a little more when I increase my pace. The combination of the 2 is that the ball of my foot gets pounded into the ground once when I land, and again when I lift my foot.
I remember a run from a couple of weeks ago when I just forgot about my form and ran the way my body naturally wanted to. My feet and legs were relaxed and I was basically just swinging my legs underneath me to keep up with the pace of my forward momentum. I think next time I'll try to emulate that feeling. Just clear my head of all the "proper form" junk I've been reading about and do what feels right. Hopefully that will be Thursday, but if my feet haven't healed by then, I might have to wait until the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment