The Bare Necessities

Me and those Feet that will carry me 13.1 miles.

Realism.

I feel breathless from this whole journey that I have been on over the last 6 months or so.  In fact, in thinking about the last 6 months, I am shocked by how fast it has gone by.

The last 6 months have been a real journey for me on many different levels.  There is the barefooting adventure, but there are also so many other things that have been going on in my life over these last 6 months.  I have got really into my role as my student union's religions & beliefs rep; I have had a quite a crazy journey with new forms of direct activism; I have had a lot of personal-exploratory meditations; and I have been going for walks down the lane of final year degree work.

You might think that this blog entry is to suggest that the barefoot adventure may be coming to a close.  The Barefoot Revolution that I have espoused, however, does not feel anywhere near a climax.  It feels more like the Barefoot Revolution has become a way of life.  In this preparatory last hours before the big run tomorrow morning, I am seeing now that this will not be my final distance run of my life.  My barefoot training has suggested that I have to think much more optimistically than that.  Perhaps last year I ran my final distance of my life in shoes.  The barefoot philosophy has given me some hope, though.  I vow to live to dream.

Tomorrow I will run 13 miles without the use of footware.  I will prove to the world around me that I still can run, despite my injury that caught me in the act last year.  I will show the world that, even if you carry a debilitating injury that forbids you from running, you need not stop believing.



Manifesto.

In the world that we are living in, where more people are allergic to food that they eat than ever in history (look at the statistics of wheat allergy sufferers, for example); more athletes are getting arthritis; more cancer is spreading despite all the research into cures; more war is taking place despite all the movements for peace; a world where so much investment is paid towards researching cures for everything but nothing seems to be working; I vow to prove that a little personal investment into spiritual harmonisation with nature is all that we need.  My barefooting adventure is just that - it is forcing myself to reconnect with the ground that is beneath me, and all around me.  It is allowing my feet to breath in and to breath out, and to adapt themselves to their surroundings.



Gratitute.

I would like to say thankyou for everyone that has supported me.  I have received so many messages of support that it has been hard to actually respond to them all.  Please know that I have utmost appreciation and Love towards you, for all the support that you have given me.

Just over a week ago, I was interviewed by Bath On TV.  This is a new online community media organisation - set up to video everything great that is happening in and around Bath.  I met James and Matt in Royal Victoria Park on a cold Thursday dusk-time.  They were just finishing off filming a local gymnast who was in the olympic team who will be running in the Bath Half.  Their interview with me was fun, creative, and very light-hearted.  They were very nice guys, and I respect all that they're planning to do with their new project.  I hope it gets really big too.  But anyway, a few days ago the actual video was released, upon the unveiling of the website.  I can't actually embed the video into the blog, so please visit this page to view the video:
http://www.bathontv.co.uk/bath-half-runners-stories-simon-jilley-goes-barefoot/

Today a friend of mine from back home sponsored me with £12.17, which was all the money he had left at the time in the bank.  This pushed up the money that has been raised for Transition Bath under the 'barefoot' agenda to £225.17, with more promised soon.  This is very encouraging for me, and I hope that it helps Transition Bath to continue with the path that it has laid out before itself.

Fundraising is here: https://www.justgiving.com/barefootsimon ;)



Final meditations.

ON Thursday evening I went for a fairly short, 3-mile run around Oldfield Park/Bear Flat.  On approaching Moorland Road something must've happened in my left leg to cause it to not lift up when it was that leg's turn to, and the big toe of the left foot skidded, causing me to quite calamitously stumble on the pavement.  This stumbling sensation on the big left toe had happened once before, when I was running the previous week on my longer 8-mile run.  This time, though, I got a feeling inside of me that everything was not quite right anymore.  I crouched down and grabbed the toe, trying to give it some immediate comfort and reassurance.  I managed to keep running the last five minutes or so to my house, but the toe was feeling sore.  Yesterday, on day two of my three-day planned Total Barefoot, I found it progressively more uncomfortable through the day to be on my foot.  I played one singles game of badminton in the evening barefoot, during which I really felt the presence of inflammation around the knuckle of the that toe.  When I returned home in the early hours of this morning I made up a special ointment out of honey, olive oil, ground devil's claw root, yellow jalokia chilli powder, and some chilli sauce.  This was due to bring the inflammation out, as all ingredients used except for the oil are known in some way to alleviate inflammation.  I spread it all around my toe and up to about halfway up my foot, and put a bandage and a sock over it.  This morning the toe felt somewhat better, but still quite sore.  I have a pack of frozen spinach on the foot for most of the day.  It currently feels quite deeply stiff around the toe, but I can still move things fine, and it doesn't hurt so much to be walking on it now.  It feels like I have had quite a big scare with this sudden injury, but I feel like I am going to be fine to run tomorrow.  The worst that could happen would be for me to pull up and incapable of going further due to the injury - and this is something I had expected to happen due to my hip all along.  I feel like this new injury may take my mind mainly off the hip, and perhaps even give me a smoother run, depending on how it fares up.

I am due to be having one more interview with Bath On TV tomorrow morning in runner's village, before they strap a GoPro camera to me for the run.

My plan, for now, is to meditate the evening away.  Mindfulness over matter, that is my way forward.


I will post a full review of the run for me when the time comes for it.  Until then, over and out.

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!

Looking at my feet

This is where a photo of my feet would go, if I hadn't realised that my old card reader doesn't read the cards from my current camera... So next time, you will get your Simon's Feet photo.  And it will be glorified through Picasa, to make the feet look almost hallucinatory.

Gorilla foot...this is how I envision my feet evolving

But for now, I will begin with what I just read on the QI feature on feet that is on the Telegraph website:

A South African study in the podiatry journal The Foot, in 2007, studied 180 modern humans from three different population groups (Sotho, Zulu, and European) and compared them to 2,000-year-old skeletons. The researchers concluded that people had healthier feet and posture before the invention of shoes. The Zulu, who often go barefoot, had the healthiest feet of the modern humans. 

(from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/qi/8404696/QI-Quite-interesting-facts-about-feet.html)

This quote ties in pretty well with what I was going to talk about in this entry:

Everyone's been asking me about why I would decide to go barefoot.  

Isn't it dodgy on my ankles, as I don't get the ankle support that I would normally get in shoes?  

BE CAREFUL OF BROKEN GLASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Won't I get frostbite?  

Sure, it's kind of understandable to run cross-country without shoes on, but tarmac isn't made for me to go barefoot on!  

I'll get HARD FEET!!  

Won't I be called crazy if I venture outdoors with no shoes on?

My experience with this barefoot project has been very different as of late compared to how I represented it in my first couple of entries.  

1. Firstly, I've cut back on the running.  I've neither found the time to go running (getting up at 5am has been a huge challenge, and I have failed to do so on almost every day since we began trying to get up at 5am...), and nor have I felt that I feel comfortable to be running yet.  I had my hip x-ray'd at the RUH today, and I should know the results of this in about a week.  And my feet are still only hardening up - I think it would be a bit foolish of me to be running around on soft feet.  This has led to me walking lots, barefoot.
2. So I've been walking loads barefoot.  I go to peoples houses barefoot; I go into shops barefoot; I get the bus barefoot; I go to uni barefoot (although I've been putting shoes on before going to lectures/seminars).  My feet are my new play-thing.  And I've been exploring using them on different grounds.  For instance, last night I went to the skip of a charity shop that I know throws out lots of fascinating stuff.  But the skip is round the back of the shop, and I have to go down a fairly bumpy bit of road where there was plenty of shiny stuff (shiny stuff is always quite scary as a barefooter, because of the whole glass idea..).  I was treading more flat-footed at this point, to spread my weight more so that if I did hit some glass it would be less likely to pierce my skin.  Anyway, I must've crunched at least 10 bits of glass under my feet in this very short walk down this 10 metre stretch of road, and none of the glass pierced my feet.  Moreover, my feet felt very refreshed after these fairly sharp steps along this road.  There were plenty of those small stones that seem to just pick themselves into your toes or the arch of the foot, which can be quite painful.  But really, it's like receiving a painful massage: it helps the muscles unless it tears them apart.
   
   
   
   Coloured gems on the famous 'glass beach' of California
   
   Also last night, I started to walk with my head up towards the sky.  The sky was beautiful.  My feet hit no glass, just a few of those dodgy little stones.  But it felt really liberating to take my eyes off of my feet.  Have you ever tried walking with your eyes closed for more than a few seconds?  I did this on the beach back home when I was last there - I planned to walk all the way to the sea without opening my eyes.  This was on Old Hunstanton beach, which is massive, it takes about 10 minutes to walk out to the sea on a good day anyway.  I ended up opening my eyes because I was confused... But anyway, the feeling was the same when I walked on the beach with my eyes closed as when I walked last night with my eyes away from my feet.  It is definitely one of my goals for the next few weeks to be able to walk/run barefoot without feeling that I need to be constantly scouting out the ground in front of me.
   
   
   
   Old Hunstanton beach
3. I'm now more interested in the spiritual benefits of walking barefoot than of the physical benefits.  Sure, taking off my shoes allows me to feel the impact of hitting the ground in the wrong way (heel-first is definitely the way of destroying your hips and knees...).  But it is much more important than that.
   I have found myself on a number of occasions to be walking in the centre of town, and losing myself amongst the hustle and bustle.  Since taking up barefoot, I've begun to strip down my feet when this happens, and put my shoes and socks in a bag.  A few minutes of walking barefoot seems to radically clear my head.  It grounds me.  I feel connected to the earth, and I feel light and freer.
   
   So I don't want to rush my barefoot running training, as I still have absolutely plenty of time until the half marathon, and would rather find the spiritually best time for me to get into running more properly.  Perhaps when my feet have hardened some more.

On a strange kind of end note for this entry, there is apparently Biblical citation of Jesus encouraging his apostles to go about their business barefoot.  It says in Matthew 10:10: 

'Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purse, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves.'

Jesus Christ, the barefoot shepherd

A foot massage

In my last blog entry I mentioned that I hadn't actually done any barefoot running since being in Alicante over two and a half months ago, and that the last time I walked barefoot was over a month ago and had to stop because the ground was too harsh on my feet.

Well, I'm going to deviate a bit now.  I just wanted to set the scene, before I would go on.

I've started a very, very healthy routine with my flatmate of getting up at 5am every day.  Whoever is up first knocks on the door of the other, and then we both do our respective spiritual routines.  My plan has been to go for a barefoot run after I've finished my morning meditation every morning, but upto today this has not happened purely because I've felt too tired.  And then, so the plan goes, I have breakfast after the run, then either leave out to uni or get on with some work or go back to bed for a while.  The important bit is actually making the disciplined effort of rising at 5am, no matter how stubborn I'm feeling towards staying in my bed and my dreams.

Today I managed to kickstart my barefoot training!  And my, did it feel good to get into it.

I thought I would just go for a walk down to Moorland Road from my flat on Hillside Road, and walk back again.  Ya know, just so that I can carefully place the tips of my toes in the water, so that I can get a feel of its temperature.

I noticed a few things in the first half of the walk, whilst I was walking down to Moorland Road.  Firstly, 7am is such a special time!  It is before anyone has really got up and started the day, but there are still a few people about.  It felt very atmospheric to me.  Oh, and the sky was really quite something.  It was pretty sunny, but there was a layer of dark clouds that looked like they were about to come over (and they have since been over, about an hour later).  The birds were at band practice.  The temperature was actually fairly mild, though my feet were feeling very cold on the slightly damp pavement.
I noticed, straight away after leaving out, how completely different of a sensation it is to be walking barefoot.  I can actually feel my weight moving on and off of the ground when I'm barefoot, as I can feel the after-shock/vibration of every footstep.  I guess shoes normally absorb this all.  So leading back to the last entry that I did, where I linked to this article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134241.htm in saying about the different kind of stride that you're supposed to have when being barefoot because of how much more uncomfortable it is to walk with the heel hitting the ground, I can clarify that in my experience I very much agree with this finding.  I don't know if it's like it every day (it certainly wasn't quite like this in Alicante), but today the pavement seemed so spiky and hard!  It was actually quite painful to walk until I started walking on the balls of my feet, and then I felt a lot bouncier (as the article suggested I would), and I found that I was walking very very quietly, like as if almost all impact of my steps had disappeared after I stopped walking on my heels.

Now, what about this ball of the foot?  Why is it called the ball of the foot?  Won't I do damage to it by walking on it?  Well, as for its origins, it is named after the largest metatarsal bone which has a ball-like appearance.  Interesting huh?  It's been used in this way since the mid-1300s.  And as for the damage, we'll see.  I'll let you know if anything happens.  But it has not happened in my experience so far with being barefoot, and I don't honestly expect it to happen in the future.  Also, I would regard the possible injuries to my feet to be much less serious compared to the injuries I have already experienced with my hips from playing badminton, from cycling, and from running badly.

I got to Moorland Road, and then walked round Triangle North, so that I could do a loop and go up Junction Road.  But, quite unexpectedly, I started running just before I got onto Junction Road.  It wasn't even raining or anything, I just felt completely like running.  Sure, my feet were cold and I was deliberately twitching my toes quite a lot so that blood kept circulating in them (I'm paranoid about getting frostbite in above-zero temperature...how embarassing it would be!), and I didn't have any speed about me because I wasn't used to either running or going barefoot, but there was a really nice feeling that I got of moving my body in this way.  It was really really relaxing, just bouncing away up the hills.
And then, to make things even more interesting, I started needing to run.  My bladder had become a little upset by the fact that I'd decided I didn't need to go to the loo between waking up and going for the run.  So I started to run faster, and more urgently.  But it still felt peaceful and relaxing.
I became surprised by how warm I had become - even though I wasn't actually running with much speed at all despite my latter urgency, I had picked up a sweat very quickly.  Next time, I decided, I won't go out with all the layers on.

So I returned home, sorted myself out (including, very importantly, washing my feet.  This avoids any awkward confrontations with either my housemate or anyone else who see me barefooted and notice the cleanliness of my feet...), and had my well-earned breakfast.  A very good start to the day.

And the best part of it all: the feeling after sitting down.  My feet tingling, and feeling smooth.  They had just received an unorthodox massage, but a massage regardless.  Completely for free.

So if anyone would like a foot massage, I would suggest you join me on my early morning barefoot run.

And for an inspiring video of this guy winning the 1960 Rome Olympics marathon (he was completely unheard of previously) without wearing shoes, see: http://youtu.be/0Dppdcy1pyM?t=5m55s

My bear feet are bigger than yours!

Hello world, again.

I am Simon.  My name is ironic, because it is often translated as to mean 'he who hears', and yet my hearing is not so great.

Now, there's a philosophy that I really really like.  And that is that all of the muscles and nerve endings on the soles of your feet are connected to different parts of your body.  I assume that this is how reflexology works, but I am not so interested in massaging other people's feet.  I do give a lot of upper back and neck massages, but for some reason I have never felt compelled to massage anyone's feet before...I think that foot massagers are a special breed of people, perhaps of a similar kind to that Tarantino guy.
But I am into exploring making use of these magical gems at the bottoms of my legs.  I don't think that I enable them to be as magical as they could be, as I keep them for too often in a comfortable environment that merely decreases the power of their muscles.

One of the reasons for me deciding to explore running barefoot is this: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134241.htm.  In March of this year, I ran the Bath Half.  I had ran some quite long distances before, but never 13 miles.  I didn't want to mess up my new badminton shoes, so I decided to go out with some dodgy trainers, thinking that they're still shoes and so I'd still be fine.  I learnt through the experience that I had, of being unable to walk without pain for the following two weeks and still continuing to have some pain in my feet for upto a month after, that not all shoes are good shoes.  In fact, after this run, I started my first explorations in walking barefoot.  Walking barefoot, for the first couple of painful weeks, was the most comfortable way of walking, as my feet muscles had been damaged and shoes seemed to just restrict the muscles moreso.

A friend of mine in Bath began to urge me, since way before the summer, to start running barefoot with her.  I agreed that I will plan for it when I got back to Bath after the summer.  She hadn't really ran barefoot before, but I liked the idea of this adventure that we'd share.

I was in Alicante, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, for a month in the summer.  The weather was good, so I mostly walked around topless and barefooted.  There were times when I'd go to a shop and realise that I'd forgotten to pack my sandles, and so either I was not allowed into the shop or I had to sneak in.  Shop workers seem to not like bare feet in Alicante.  I was running often in Alicante, as there was very good reason to be doing so.  My brother had a room in a flat about twenty minutes run from the beach, so I often ran down to the beach with just swimming shorts on, and nothing else.  My bare feet felt lovely cycling the ground - it felt at times like I was hovering along the surface of the ground, as there was no aftershock being felt throughout my body.

Perhaps due to excessive wintery cycling on a bike that was way too big for me, or perhaps because of playing badminton at a competition level (both arguments are probably equally as likely), I have attained a hip injury that makes a lot of physical activity a little stressful.  I haven't ran a huge amount this year because of this injury:- after the Bath Half in March, I had been planning to run some 10k's throughout the year, but this hasn't happened because I've not been able to begin running distances with my dodgy hip.  However, that running that I did in Alicante had very little consequence on my body.  I believe that the findings from that study I have linked above, of how barefoot runners do not have to absorb the collision impact that shoe-wearing runners absorb, is the reason for why barefoot running was so good for me in Alicante.

I left Alicante for a Buddhist community in the Spanish Pyrenees.  The landscape was harsh, and very rocky.  My barefoot running routine was forced to stop, because I could not master the terrain there.

When I got back to England, I went on a hike in North Norfolk.  For the first day and a half-or-so, I walked completely barefooted.  It felt good, but I really didn't feel good to be walking along the boardwalked path that was covered in chicken wire.  So the sandles soon were used.

Since then, I haven't really been barefooted so much.  This little adventure with Transition Bath is incredibly exciting for me, as I believe that it will be very life-affirming.  This will be my first deep exploration into my feet's properties.