Barefooting the soft Bathonian snow

Frozen man in the snow...Bath Abbey.

I'm not sure quite why we did it, but the other day myself and my barefooting friend Alex (who, I can confirm, is also going to be running the Bath Half this year barefoot) at about midnight ran down his road to Moorland Road in Oldfield Park, and ran back up it again.  I was dressed as a machine, with five layers on my top half.  Alex was stripped down to just shorts.  It is clear that he wanted the refreshment aspect, whilst I just wanted a little stroll to air my feet.

Anyway, we were both barefooted, and it was Friday night.  Lots of snow everywhere, about 4-5inches deep I predict all across Bath.  As my feet touched the outdoor ground, they felt joyful.  They didn't feel cold, they just felt free.  It wasn't actually so cold, anyway.

To compare the cold, I will relate a story from my Christmas holidays.  I stayed at Skanda Vale, a sanathana dharma Hindu community in Carmarthenshire, Wales, with my mum over Christmas.  She hadn't been there before, but I'd stayed for a combined three weeks previous, so it was all wacky for her but pretty decent and expectedly unexpected for me.
On Boxing Day, a big group of us staying there (possibly 30 of us) went down to Tenby for the Boxing Day swim.  At least 15 of us were actually due to be going in for the swim, including myself, and we all dressed up for the occasion.
We got there ridiculously early.  I was expecting us to be working on Indian time, but my understanding of Indian time was that you always arrive late for things.  We were an hour early.  We all got into our costumes, and just hung out on the beach mostly doing the Gangnam Style dance at odd occasions.  When the time finally came to assemble with all the other swimmers, it appeared that we'd been fooled.  We had to stand around with the other swimmers for a good 10 or 15 extra minutes, in the absolutely pouring and freezing rain.  My feet were freezing out - I already had lost feeling in the outer edges of both feet, and was a little worried about them.  The sand at Tenby, let me tell you, was absolutely freezing this midwinter morning, and the rain puddles didn't exactly help.
Eventually, the loudspeaker guy said that we would be have our mad dash into the sea in #countdown5minutes.  A minute later, there was a bang and everyone was confused and then people at the front were running and so I leapt for it, sprinted with the one goal of the seas glorious encapsulation in my mind.  I had a warrior mask on, which gave me tunnel-vision.  All I could see was the sea in front of me.
When I got to the sea, it wasn't actually so bad.  I just sprinted into it, but didn't dive in.  I got to about waist-deep, and was confused, as it got a bit cold.  Within a few seconds of pondering over things, I was rugby tackled into the sea.  A big rush overcame me.  I started swimming, but everything had gone numb.  It was like my body was piloting itself: my mind had completely disconnected itself from the body.
Anyway, we stayed in there for some 10 minutes or so, and then came out, got given a medal, I was given a cup of mulled wine (I completely gave up drinking about 9 months before, but this didn't mean anything when I had this warm wine in my hands), and I tried getting dressed.  It was all well and good, until I realised that my feet could not fit into my shoes anymore.  I couldn't feel my feet, so I didn't know what was happening, but I knew I had to be very gentle with them.
My decision was to lay in front of the big bonfire they'd got going on the beach and to thaw the feet out.  This worked terrifically - otherwise I would, for sure, have had frostbite.

So the point of relating to this story is to show how cold my feet could get, as compared to what I had the other day.  I could not feel my feet anymore when I was in Wales.  I had the potential of losing feeling in them for years, if I hadn't acted upon it straight away.  The other day, there was a little bit of cold under my feet, but it felt nowhere near as cold as what I experienced that day on the beach in Tenby.

One thing I noticed, the other day, was the sharpness of some of the snow.  This could be where the big issues are - and this goes for runners with shoes alike.  I stepped on some chunky bits of icy snow, which seemed to go right into the arch of my foot.  These bits of icy snow didn't feel so constructive...

We both managed to get down the hill and up again without too many problems.  It was a little slippery going down the hill (when normally I would deliberately slide down with my big walking boots on), but going back up was fine except for the bits of ice sticking out of the ground.

In my opinion, running in the snow is just like running in any other conditions, except with the possibility of a little less traction and some sharper bits here and there.  There is no need to be scared of it: just train up your feet to be used to the cold.  It's such a nice feeling, anyway, to come back into a warm house after your feet have become cold and callussed.  The feet tend to buzz a little, like after receiving a massage.

For those who are interested, here are a couple of pages that I found useful to read whilst writing this blog entry:

Winter Barefoot Running - is it right for you?
7 Barefoot Running Myths: Barefoot and Minimalist Running


Now, on the complicated general side of things for me:

I haven't been running properly in a few months, as my hip has taken major toll over the winter months.  I've had it scanned, and re-scanned, and had an arthrogram and then an MRI arthrogram, and they tell me that it's osteoarthritis.  Hence the difficulties I've had over the last few months - it reacts to colder and damper conditions.  They say that there are some bone spurs/osteophytes on the joint that they would like to remove, but they'll give me a shot of steroids in the joint first to see what that does.  I'm hoping that the steroid shot will sort things out in the short term, and then I'll have the surgery sometime after the Bath Half, and after the badminton season has finished at uni.
For now, though, I'm still taking it easy so as to avoid causing unnecessary inflammation.  I've experienced a lot of inflammation in my hip before as I used to cycle until just under a year ago, and the inflammation can have such a long-lasting effect.  If I were to be training now, I would probably be able to run once a week and have to rest it off for the other 6 days of the week.
My solution, then, is to wait for the steroid shot, and start running again after having this.  If it doesn't have the desired effect, I will just keep my fitness up with non-demanding activities (badminton doesn't have such a toll on my hip, and neither do some yoga postures, etc.) and run the Bath Half on the day without having ran in preparation for it.  I will keep my leg muscles up to strength (I know, from my experience of running last year, that the legs can get some serious cramp if they're not prepared for the run!), and generally be very easy-going in my buildup to the run.
This doesn't stop me working on my barefooting, of course, and as I explained before barefooting is very beneficial for my condition, taking a lot of strain off of the hip when I am trodding my ways.  Therefore, I will continue to go barefoot.

Sorry I haven't posted a route to run on, again.  I felt, though, a duty to send out a barefooting message to you all!

Until next time, stay safe!

A awesome run around the park

So I know this blog is supposed to be about local running, but I had to post about my experience today in Central Park, New York; as much to commit it to my own memory as anything else.

I may be stuck here due to cancelled flights, missing my family and all the fun the snow, but this helped go a little way to improving my mood.

Picture this: 6.30am on a cold NY morning and I began my run around Central Park. The sun wasn’t up yet and the running track through the park was lit in a dull glow from the streetlights. Then, in a city of however-many million people, I looked around and saw I was running practically on my own. Wonderful.

As the sun began to rise and I headed down the western edge of the park, I felt like I was in a movie, Calvin Harris was banging away in my ears and life felt very, very good. Then, coming back up the east side of the park, the sky scrapers running the opposite length began to glow a radiant terracotta and seemed to be utterly relishing their own magnificence. You know how Bath looks in the autumn sun? Well, it was something like that. Awesome.

Including the jog from the hotel, my morning’s run took in: The Empire State Building, The Plaza Hotel, The building used in Ghostbusters, The Tavern on the Green (also in Ghostbusters), The Metropolitan Museum, The Guggenheim and finally a glimpse down Broadway to the lights of Times Square.

So the moral of this story? If you’re a runner and you go to NY City, take your running shoes and add a run in Central Park to your ‘to do’ list. It’s a 6.1 mile loop, a little hilly, but you don’t really notice this with all the sights to see. I have to say, though, that I do have half an eye on running a marathon if I can get through the Bath Half intact, but thinking about running a distance equivalent to four and a half times round this loop makes me think twice about the wisdom of such an undertaking. On the plus side, I comfortably managed these 6 miles in 55 minutes, so that equates to me finishing the Half in just under 2 hours… doesn’t it?