I started the 100 pushup challenge on the 4th. Tomorrow I’ll be doing the last day of week 2. I have to say, it’s do-able but brutal. It went from intervals that added up to 24 to doing 71 last night! The most in a row was 17 though. May I just say 17 is a LOT? My form kind of went to hell on the last 2 or 3. I’m going to try and do W3D3 tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be re-doing this week.

That’s not a bad thing though. The bad thing would be to give up. Which, actually, I’ve done before. This time I decided to start easier and I am going through the plan using modified pushups. My plan is to get to the end of the program and then start over from the beginning doing regular (real?) pushups.

I always say that people should start from where they are, but the idea of actually doing it myself seems to have completely slipped my grasp until lately.

Starting from the beginning really worked for me running barefoot. I’ve skipped from the walk/run program to the run/walk program (confusing much?) in the book I bought, Running for Mortals. I have to admit I also skipped a few days here and there. But overall I have been following the plan and when I am sore I take days off until I’m not and that is really working for me.

I’m already running as far as I was before I hurt my hip and started running barefoot. I am progressing as slowly as I need to to get used to the barefoot thing and I am finding that the simple act of adding a minute of walking here and there makes running not only less intimidating, but also easier to progress.

So far the only aches I’ve had since running barefoot are my actual feet and sometimes ankles. But it’s not an I hurt myself ache, it’s an I’m using muscles that didn’t know they were there ache.

Hmm. Turns out my advice isn’t half bad. Maybe I should start taking it more often.

Went and did the Pirate Booty Hunt at Varn Ranch in Plant City last weekend. It was definitely different than any other run I’ve done yet. Three and a half miles, but I don’t think anyone ran the whole thing. The trick was you had to look for little pirate chests that could be traded in for booty.

It started on a narrow path – we had to walk because everyone in front of us was and there wasn’t any way around without being a bit pushy. But soon enough the dirt road opened up and everyone was able to space out a bit.

They put little orange flags all along the path to follow, and pirate signs that meant time to start searching! Around those everyone spread out off the path looking for the booty. My friend’s daughter found one that got her a entry to another Beach Beast run, can’t beat that!

What made it fun is the flags led us completely off the path quite a bit, through the trees and close enough to the swamp that the water was coming in my shoes. I kept my eyes open for alligators or snakes but all I saw was ample evidence of cattle that had been there. I had asked if it was barefoot friendly and was told there were no rules against it but they’d prefer no one ran barefoot. Gotta respect the people putting on the race and due to the frequent cattle bombs I’m kind of glad I did!

I have finally stopped cycling once every three or four months and started riding a couple times a week. Not seriously, just about 30 minute at a time. When I rode completely randomly I’d ride way too far and then want to die or at least not walk for a few days when I was done. I’m being a bit more reasonable now.

But here’s the thing. I can’t find ANYTHING about how I’m supposed to be doing this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to sit, what to do with the gears, or why so many people have those bikes were they lean forward against the handlebars. Not a clue.

Go Google running and you will find 400,000 plans to follow depending on your goals. You’ll find you should relax your shoulders, not cross your arms in front of your body, and hold your hands relaxed like you’re holding raw eggs. Google barefoot running and you’ll find you should NOT heal strike; you SHOULD run tall and look where you are going (not down) and all kinds of other interesting tips.

Now Google cycling. You can find how to choose a bike. Who cares? I already have a super groovy radio flyer looking bike my mom got me at Walmart for my birthday a few years ago. You can find how to change a tire. OK, that’s good stuff. I watched the videos and poured through the articles a few times. But that’s about it. Is there no particular form you are supposed to strive for when cycling? No tips and tricks, no way to hold your arms, no warnings to relax your shoulders or anything else. Is it really that easy? Just get on your bike and ride?

Somehow I think not. Maybe you have to be in a secret circle to learn this stuff. So my current goal is to figure it out. What DO you do with those gear things? One way and it’s too easy to spin the pedals, the other way it’s too hard, sounds like a losing proposition to me.

But I WILL find out. Stupid secret circles.

Saturday my sister called to let me know she had rented a camping spot at the lake about 5 minutes up the road and wanted to know if we wanted to go with her. Mind you she didn’t want to SLEEP there, just hang out until we were ready to go home and sleep in our warm beds.

A five minute drive and I get clothes that smell like a camp fire AND s’mores? I’m in!

After s’mores we got bored of course (no food?) and decided to drive over to the very long more-grass-where-there-used-to-be-a-lake-than-lake pier. A fun trick we’ve found since living in Florida is that if you shine a light at an alligator you will see the red reflect off its eyes, it’s an easy way to find them in the dark.

We saw one and were properly awestruck (Arizona-ans never seem to get over Florida stuff). Then it decided to check out the light being shone on it and swam right up to the pier. Very cool! Except that my mom was quite convinced that alligators could jump and tried to convince us it would jump 20 feet straight up to get us on the pier. Sometimes I think she’s crazy gullible, sometimes I think she gets us with more jokes than we will ever know.

Anyway, on the way back we saw more eyes and my dad turned the truck to watch what turned out to be a rabbit in the woods. After being silly amused at watching a rabbit for a while we turned away and saw a bobcat that was also watching the rabbit. I don’t care what state you are from, that’s dang cool. It was looking at us over a little log for a minute or two, probably thinking of how he could repay us for scaring away the rabbit.

Why is it that when I bring my camera I see pretty flowers and when I don’t I see everything else?

I can’t believe I haven’t posted in two weeks. Not because I am so consistent in writing here, but because I usually write when I run and stop writing when I stop running. Which I’ve actually been doing consistently!

I have been running ever since I decided to go barefoot, just kind of leaving the house and running till I didn’t feel like it anymore. That was getting me a bit further than a mile, but not much.

I was still more in the reading about running mood than an actually running mood, so I picked up another book, this time Running for Mortals, co written by The Penguin himself. I loved his articles in Running World!

The book is greatly motivating (as expected) and it has the biggest variety of running plans you can imagine. For 5 and 10K it has a walk, a walk/run plan, a run/walk plan, a run plan, and a kick butt run plan. I decided to swallow my shouldn’t-be-existing-anyways pride and start with a walk/run plan. To make myself feel a bit better about it I’m doing the 10K plan instead of the 5K plan. I started on the 12th, and actually haven’t missed a day yet! That’s somewhat miraculous for me.

I squished and modified the first few weeks into two, and will be starting week 5 next Sunday. No further modifications though, I want to be sure not to overdo it and not to hurt myself. I keep reading that a relatively lot of people get stress fractures in their feet barefoot running and though I don’t know exactly what that is I DO know exactly that I don’t want to find out personally.

There are a few things that are making this work and helping me stay consistent when I usually wouldn’t.

• Running barefoot is new to me and just fun
• All but one night of my no-run nights I bicycle
• I’ve never ridden steadily so it’s double the fun and double the I’m actually getting better at something
• It’s written down on a paper calendar, so I get to cross each day off. I love to cross things off a list!
• The running days go back and forth between harder and easier days, so I’m not ALWAYS trying to do better than the day before, some days are just easy-breezy
• The plan calls for running 4 days a week starting this week, which I’ve never done before!

Long story short, I’m easy to amuse and always have been. But also, it’s nice to have a running plan to follow. I haven’t done that since starting running with the Couch to 5K program.

This is a (squished) 10 week plan, I’m hoping I can last the whole thing, and then move on to something a lot more running and a lot less walking. Every time I look at the plan my mind wants to start cutting out weeks, but I am going to try and follow it pretty close so I don’t end up hurting something.

Did I say I was going to keep that short?

I hate to admit it, but I am not generally a people person. People are just so mean and rude; it makes me crazy and a bit ashamed to be one of us sometimes. But as great as I can be (being human and all) at having a negative attitude someone always has to come around and change it.

Tonight I was heading out to the dentist’s at the last minute, of course. I have to drive quite a ways down a narrow, one lane in each direction road to get there and not far down it there was a car parked funny almost in the trees off the side of the road and a guy standing in the road, waving his arms.

My bad karma thought process… car jackers? An accident? Why are they making us stop when I have somewhere to be in 20 minutes and I see someone with a cell phone?

As it turned out there was an electric wire down, right across the road from windshield height to the ground as it crossed, completely blocking the road and strategically placed to cause a horrible accident. These people had seen it about a minute before we came up the road and stopped what they were doing to direct traffic in both directions around the wire. We could only pass on one side of the road so the 2 directions had to take turns to get by.

I find it amazing that there were about 10 strangers there working together to make sure everyone else was safe. After all, they too were driving somewhere and they could have just driven around it and went on.

I don’t know if I am just easy to impress or not, but it seemed like a really big deal to me.

I see people go out of their way for others fairly often here, though usually it’s for animals. There’s a lot of opportunity for that in Florida! I’ve seen a semi pulled over while the rough and tough looking driver carried a big turtle to the side of the road, people stop for ducks, deer too close to the edge of the road, even a big alligator once.

My favorite was a red corvette that whipped past me on that same narrow road. He was in such a hurry I jumped when he went by because he wasn’t even in my rear view mirror a minute before. Then I came around a corner and he was just stopped. Why? We waited about 5 minutes while a couple of sand cranes walked slowly across the road.

I saw these cranes at the lake, not crossing the road (insert joke here) but still. Kind of makes you all warm and fuzzy doesn’t it?

I’ve found two very strange things about this barefoot running bug I seem to have picked up. More than two if I really wanted to get into it.

The first is that a person really can have muscles they never knew existed. I could feel the muscles on TOP of my feet after my first couple of runs. Seriously, what do muscles up there even do? After walking barefoot on the trails for almost an hour Saturday and then running a mile on the blacktop Sunday my entire feet and legs up to about 3 inches above my ankles felt like your arms should after a good workout. Not aching, but certainly there. It was pretty funny actually because the rest of me didn’t feel a thing. I can’t say I ever experienced that before.

The other really strange phenomenon I’ve found is ‘phantom pebbles’ or sticks, whatever the case may be. It happens every single run, trail or street. I feel something stuck to my foot and when I go to brush it away there’s nothing there. But I still feel it when I start running again. Makes me feel a wee bit neurotic to tell the truth.

I ran a mile and a half tonight, which is a quarter mile longer than my last run so I’m pretty happy with it.

I did brush the same non-existing stick off my foot like three times. My goal for my next run is to only stop and brush off things that aren’t actually there once per item. Neurotic much?

After I got home tonight I decided not to go for a run.  No shame in that, running every other night is a bit more than the 3 times a week that always used to be my goal that I never kept. 

After work my insanely active lab pup got me playing with her, which somehow got my energy back up to where I decided just to run to the end of the street and back for fun.  Next thing you know I had run my mile way faster than usual, just for fun.  What is that? Somehow I accidentally got my mile run in tonight without even trying.

Tomorrow is a day off and Friday, then a Saturday trail run which is just too fun to skip.  I love walking or running in the woods.  I do wish I could train my puppy to run with me without pulling since she loves the trails as much or more than I do, but that is something I’ll just have to work on.

I don’t know if the difference is that I’m running barefoot now, that I took a few month off, or that I’m no longer pushing myself to do anything but what I want to but somehow running has got fun again. 

Now if only I could get started with weights again!

Keeping on track, ran my mile yesterday. Good thing since it’s crazy windy outside tonight.  I may be on the treadmill tomorrow though because we’re expecting rain and I’m not ready to run in the dark and the rain barefoot! 

I know there are two sides to everything but when it comes to running it seems like the two sides are SO far apart that one or the other should be right and the other should just be obviously wrong.  But of course it’s never that easy.

On one hand I read a lot about how it’s important to progress slowly to be certain that you do not injure yourself. Don’t run yourself into the ground, don’t run your fastest, don’t run till you are ready to drop or you’ll regret it the next day.  This happens to be true, there is a fine line between I had a great run yesterday and I can’t feel my legs.  Or I wish I couldn’t.  But taking this path means that improvement is slow.  In my case really, really slow.

I’ve been running mostly off but plenty of on for about 2 years and after finally getting up to a 5K I had to start over and at this point I’m just back to a mile. It’s an easy mile, and I don’t get tired of running at all, but I’m trying to follow people’s advise to start and progress slow to avoid injury.  That’s all well and good but it’s amazing how hard it is, sometimes I feel like I should run as fast as I can and as far as I can just to see what I can do. But I think taking it slow is good advise for me right now because at this point the muscles in my feet kind of ache the day after running sometimes.  Not like I hurt them, more like your muscles feel after a workout that was hard enough to feel but not brutal enough to make you wonder how exercise could possibly be healthy. Running barefoot is certainly pointing out muscles I didn’t know I had!

On the other hand there are people who say if you aren’t pushing your limits all the time you aren’t doing it right. Whatever it may be. These are the people who run a marathon after running for 9 months and people who are running ultras.  Sad truth?  How I wish I was one of them!  I’d love to be one of those people who do amazing things and who know their limits because they’ve pushed themselves to them and maybe even past them. I’m amazed by every one of them, and I don’t understand how they do what they do without injuring themselves on a daily basis. Is it because they are physically stronger?  Just because they want what they want so badly that there is no choice but to keep pushing?

I always wonder if people who push that hard are always in pain and just ignoring it or seriously just that good.

I’d like to blame genetics, whatever it is I”m not real likely to ever run an ultra or even a marathon.  I’d really, really like to be able to say I’d done one but it would take me like 40 years to get to that mileage at my current rate and then I’d be in my 80s and what are the chances? I’d also love to rough it in Alaska, but um, it’s kind of cold there.  Heck, I’m already worried about trail running barefoot in the summer because of ticks and Lyme disease. 

How do people do it?  I think it’s mind over matter.  Some people’s minds are strong enough to bring them past any pain and past any obstacles and right to their goal, whatever it is.  My mind tells me relax, don’t worry about it.  Be happy with where you are and don’t compare yourself with other people.  And that’s all good, some people even strive for it.  But while those people who push themselves to the limit already know what they are capable of I’ll always wonder, what if?

At least I have a glass of Sauvignon Blanc to keep me company while I ponder.

I decided to try running barefoot again, but since running on pavement isn’t really working for me lately I went over to the park across the street and ran on the dirt road there. My 11 year old son went with me; he seems to be developing a love for running that I am both surprised and super happy about.

When Alex runs with me in his sneakers he sounds like a herd of elephants rampaging up the street, he slams his feet on the ground so hard it hurts ME to run with him, so I didn’t know how well he’d take to running barefoot. Turns out he loves it; he says it’s easier to run without shoes. Even on a road full of shells!

The path we chose looks nice and smooth at a glance, but if you look closer it’s covered in tiny shells and pebbles. Strangely we felt them more when we were just walking then when we were running. There’s a narrow sandy path leading to the road we wanted to run on, so we wore our shoes in and then tossed them in a bag and left it on the side of the road. We didn’t want to go in barefoot because a lot of people ride horses on the trail and shoes or not there are some things I do not want to step on.

We passed a couple teenagers when we were walking in and then again after we ditched our shoes, I have to admit I felt a bit silly running down the path with no shoes on when I had just had them on a few minutes ago. I muttered something about doing an experiment to them as we passed. That got a laugh out of all of us, though probably for different reasons. I’m going to have to work on ignoring the are –you-bat-shit-crazy looks. Shouldn’t be too hard, not like I haven’t got them before.

Oh, and just to make things a little more interesting we noticed these signs on the way out. Oops.