Following a little time off from my barefoot running experiment I'm back at it. Instead of the benchmark of loops around the high school track, this time I'm increasing my distance more gradually and at smaller intervals. I started over two weeks ago by beginning each day with 5 minutes of barefoot running, in place, in the grassy area of my backyard. After one week of this, I graduated up to 5 minutes of barefoot running up and down my street. Same time, first thing each morning. Now, this week I'm up to 6 minutes. Which coincides nicely with one loop around my block.
I'm having much better success, so far (knock-on-wood). I'm not experiencing any pain in my feet, nice calluses are developing on the bottoms of my feet, and the skin on the bottom of my feet is not peeling like crazy as it did before. (The peeling skin wasn't painful as much as it was annoying and rather disgusting.) My plan for now is to keep with a steady, slow increase in time. Just one additional minute each week. The downside is while it's still warm in the morning for now, it won't be long until that asphalt is frosty at 6 AM. We will have to see at that point if my feet are toughened up enough to take the encroaching cold.
