Almost 10 months of injury-free barefoot running.

My favorite philosopher, Facundo Cabral often says that happiness is a right and also a responsibility. I agree. So, I'll try this way of expressing my thoughts about how I'm trying to live a 3-D life and which things make me happy and a 3-D artist... since living life well is an art!

And here is my first post:

I started running barefoot and semi-barefoot on June 31st, 2009. We're almost at 10 months from that glorious day when I decided to go try what I instinctively knew was right. After battling with many frequent and recurring injuries (knees, shins, ankles), I knew that there was a better way to run. And so I tried barefoot running and fell in love with it. Almost as though magically, the pain left and it has never come back.

There are, however, other issues one must deal with, such as conditioning one's feet to be strong enough to handle barefoot running, especially the first few months. Another issue was getting my skin to be tough enough to handle a wide variety of surfaces besides grass. Though many of my barefoot runs are on grass or on the track (rubber), very often I'll just go on to the streets and sidewalks, paved trails, etc. The most I've done is 6-7 miles entirely barefoot. Of course, that took a lot of conditioning and building up. Right now, I can only handle 4-5 miles before my feet start complaining...

A big mistake I made today was to go to White Rock Lake at about noon. By that time, the concrete had already absorbed enough heat to give one's feet a hard time. The tricky thing was that the weather was very pleasant, so during the first 25 minutes, I did not notice the hot concrete. The way back was painful, as I only saw a couple of puddles where I could refresh my feet. So, right now my feet are inside a bucket of ice-cold water. And after being in the sun all afternoon, I am rehydrating with some cold limeade with salt and sugar.

This makes me happy. Baaaaam!