Day #1

First off, Check out the new pair of running sandals I just ordered. Click here and order them now, they are on sale!!

So today was day one of my transition to barefoot running. Everything that I have read so far has said that if I don't take my time and try to "jump" right in to it that I will get hurt. If any of you know me, you know that I am not a very patient person. I want to have everything NOW. But I have decided that I better just stick to the program and take it easy.

So I have been watching a lot of videos about barefoot running and reading a lot about the different reasons why people decide to take this path. Here are some of the thoughts that I have had through it all that have motivated me to try this out:

1. If God gave me feet with an arch, the arch in my foot must serve a purpose. The fact that it flexes seems like our bodies natural shock absorbing device. Why do we NEED to have something that lifts it and holds it up if it is meant to flex? Wouldn't that defeat its purpose? Check out the quote at the bottom of this post to see what Christopher McDougall has to say about this in "Born to Run"

2. I have flat feet, my feet always hurt in my shoes, I can never find a running shoe that seems to work for me.

3. When I run, like many of you, my heel plays a huge part in my running form and style. That does not seem right, why do I run like that? Why would I run slamming my heel down in to the ground when it is the boniest part of my whole foot? I try to stop, but my stupid thick-soled running monsters don't make that very easy for me.

4. I want to be hardcore. I have always wanted to do something that others would be like, " woah look at that dude, he is hardcore." This is my opportunity. Look out world, here I come.

So anyway, today I started the process. Almost anywhere I have read or watched, they tell you to start out just walking around barefoot outside for a while, and practice good form (I will touch on what "good form" should be later). So i did. I walked down the street, walked around the block a little, jogged in the grass some and just started to get my feet used to the idea of being nakie. So far so good.

"Just look at the architecture," Dr Hartmann explained. Blueprint your feet, and you'll find a marvel that engineers have been trying to match for centuries. Your foot's centerpiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way is gets stronger under stress. The harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. No stonemason worth his trowel would ever stick a support under an arch; push up from underneath and you weaken the whole structure. Buttressing the foot's arch from all sides is a high-tensile web of twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, twelve rubbery tendons, and eighteen muscles, all stretching and flexing like an earthquake resistant suspension bridge."