So 20 miles a week running in addition to probably 30 miles of walking started taking its toll. A few weeks ago I noticed my left Achilles tendon was a bit sore. I persevered as this kind of thing happened before and that seemed to be fine. But more recently, I just wasn’t willing to push through it to run as the pain became too great. I’ve dropped to about a mile a week, and will cut back even more. I had heard how the body is typically able to repair damage from normal use as it happens, but if it starts falling behind, the result is a repetitive stress injury. I’m just going to assume that’s the case — rest and gentle treatment cause the symptoms to nearly disappear, and aggressive use brings them back.

Fortunately I’ve found that bicycling doesn’t aggravate it nearly as much so I’m switching back to that. In turn, that is motivating me to get the bike projects done that I have partially completed. Unfortunately, it looks like I’m going to sit out the Lilac 5K this year.

Nonetheless, I see the sexy young women out running these early-spring days and all I can think is, “gosh, I wish I could get back to running.”

Yesterday I went running. It was kind-of wet out, and that makes it difficult to spot otherwise-shiny glass on the ground. Later last night I was limping a little and thought it might be a flare-up of plantar fasciitis. Come this morning I figured it must have been something stuck in my foot. It was indeed glass. A relatively big piece, in fact, in a relatively sensitive area. So here it is: the big piece of glass I stepped on yesterday.

The unique and comfortable Soft Star Ramblers I designed

Back in February of this year, I found out about Soft Star Shoes (521 Southwest 2nd St., Corvallis, OR) from the The Running Barefoot Yahoo! Group. I was impressed that they were minimal shoes to begin with, but more that they could be day-to-day shoes that could be worn comfortably. I actually ordered off-the-shelf to start with in two sizes which they shipped out and allowed me to return before designing custom Ramblers. They were even nice enough to send a swatch book of leather so I could really get a feel for the colors. I picked chocolate brown and purple. I had a minor problem after just a short time with them: one the split uppers was more split on one side than the other. They happily took the return and made a minor fix that corrected the problem.

Well, after just about 1 month, I had worn a hole clear through one of the soles. I don’t think I was being unusually hard on them — I probably walked no more than 50 miles. I had also made a point of mentioning that I was looking for a long-wearing sole, as they had several options available. They suggested their thin rubber sole which they said is “durable and will last a long time”. Maybe we just disagree on what’s meant by a “long time”, but I am very disappointed. As such, I decided to make sure “Soft Star Shoes” and “Suck” appear in the title, as that’s how I assess new products with a simple Google search.

Bridgestone Potenza RE-92 soles are H-rated for 149 miles per hour

However, since I liked the style, I decided to have car tires cut to match the soles and stitch the uppers to that. I had made tire sandals before using a reciprocating saw with a metal blade, but the edges weren’t well defined and I wanted holes to stitch through. I decided to go with Nifty-Bar, Inc. (450 Whitney Rd., Penfield) who I use for work for their water-jet cutting services. I provided an outline and asked that small holes be laid out along the edge about 1/4″ apart. The water-jet machine made nice cuts through the rubber and various steel belts in the tire.

I took apart the Ramblers and reassembled them successfully with tire soles. I don’t think I’ll have to worry about wearing them out anymore.

Last night we got an inch or so of snow accumulation.  I was excited to try running in it.  After all, I’ve been practicing as the weather got colder.  But, as it turns out, snow — being largely frozen water — takes a lot of heat to melt, and in turn, it feels really really cold. And as a result, this run was spent most focused on running and on the condition of my body, particularly my feet.

It was kind of funny, actually, because I swear I could hear my cardiovascular system curse in surprise as it attempted to boost blood-flow to my extremities. My feet got much colder, much faster than they do even at colder temperatures, and I kept making sure they weren’t losing sensation, feeling hot, nor appearing a color other than pink. I wasn’t going to push things too far, so I decided to cut my run much shorter and barely covered more than a mile.

After an hour or so, everything was back to normal. Lucky? Not really. Just careful.

Anyway, Ali ran it in 36:11 and won 2nd place for her age/gender category out of 6 other runners. There were 6 men in my category but I came in 4th among them with my time of 29:54. It’s “officially” listed as 9:39/mile on the PCR Timing site which surprised me because that’s slower than my 9:33 pace at The Medved Lilac 10K and 5K Family Fun Run [and this time, I think I was the only person running without shoes ... people sure seem to like buying those over-the-counter orthopedics]. According to USA Track & Field (USATF), the course is actually 5.20 km or 3.23 miles, so my per-minute time based on that is 9:11.

I was a little disappointed that the promise of a gift bag from UofR and other post-race items were not available, but I can’t fault them too much because the turnout was so high they didn’t even have enough shirts for everyone. But you know, it doesn’t really matter because we had a great time.

I ran a “long” 5K run on Monday and Tuesday, then a “short” 2 mile run on Wednesday, and another “long” 5K run on Thursday [hmm ... like a train whistle warning a crossing] before resting up for the race. Well, I did it. And yeah: barefoot. And I even beat 30 minutes, finishing in 29:35 according to the PCR Timing Official Results for this years race (which placed me 397 of 864 overall and 21st among the 31 male 35-39 year-olds). This is great because I beat my 35:58 official time for the Corporate Challenge in 2001.

Ali ran too and, despite admitting not training enough, ran for the whole race and finished in 37:31.

But the remarkable serendipity of our runner numbers was the amusement of the day. We were each given random numbers and she got #123 and I got #321. The odds that I would get the same digits as her number in the reverse order was (given 864 runners) about 1 in 863. If you figure on the specific combination of 123 and 321, that’s something like 1 in 745,632. Pretty neat.

I just got back from a run in the rain.  It’s about 60°F outside and a constant misty drizzle. I decided to try running wearing my swim shorts, figuring they would handle water better than the cotton shorts I would ordinarily be wearing (and so far, only once this year: I’m still in sweat pants for the cool mornings.) Things went very well as I had no trouble with them.

I also ran my practice 5K course (well, more-or-less 5K) for the first time yesterday. I am working up to run the The Medved Lilac 10K and 5K Family Fun Run on the last day of The Lilac Festival so I figured I better get my distance up. In all, it wasn’t that hard although noticeably a bit longer than my usual run that’s about 2 miles or so.

I’m also following the advice of Ken Bob Saxton (a.k.a. Barefoot Ken Bob) on the The Running Barefoot Yahoo! Group because I’ve had some ankle pain recently. He said — in response to someone else’s comment on the same thing — “I often have ankle soreness, especially when I fail to run on a variety of surfaces, especially surfaces with lots of variation,” and added, “the solution is to run on uneven terrain, even if just for 50 or 100 yards, seems to be enough to ‘break up’ the groove, once in a while.” As such, I’ve been taking a detour once or twice a week to run through the short trail that runs from near The Genesee River-Erie Canal East Guard Lock (440 Kendrick Rd.) into Genesee Valley Park near the bridge over Hawthorn Dr., then continue on through the park on the uneven grass. That seems to have fixed the problem.