Friday 8 February 2013

Busy like a little bee!

Hey everyone, apologies for the lack of posting of late but I have been busy running!

Trying to up my mileage now getting ready for my first Ultra in May! *GULP!*

The Ultra that I speak of is the North Downs Way 50 or NDW50 for short and as you may have guessed by the title, its a 50 mile.
50 miles, 80% trail with a cut off time of 13.5 hours......again....*GULP*

Now the bit that may sound even more bonkers is that I also intend to take this on in my sandals.
This I may regret later but its all part of the experience right?

Now everyone knows the disadvantages of sandals, exposed feet is the main one. Lets instead look at the advantages.
Ever finished a long run and taken off your shoe to the horror of black toe nails? Your poor little toes being constantly squished into the ends of your shoe causing bruising and a lot of discomfort.
That doesn't happen in sandals. There is nothing there to do the squishing!
Wet, stinky socks with what used to be your foot inside have been replaced with a prune!
With sandals (presuming you are not wearing socks!) you don't have this problem! The water just bounces off of your foot and gets flicked away. Ok so if you run in the rain your feet do get softer, but given the option of having a soggy sock keeping everything close to your skin or a bare foot? I choose the bare foot!

One problem I have found with rain running in sandals is that when the foot bed gets very wet you end up with a kind of aquaplane situation.
The water forms a layer on the foot bed, your foot contacts the floor and the water is momentarily trapped underneath causing a bit of a slip.
I am going to experiment with different foot bed toppers as my sandals are just "naked" ones. Hopefully this will solve the aquaplane issue and also cut down on a few blisters that I tend to get.
The guys and girls at Luna Sandals have already come out with some great solutions for the new foot beds but I don't wont to buy new ones, I want to modify my ones! :)

Right! Back to the point and back to the trails!
I am starting to get both excited and nervous at the thought of running 50 miles.

50 miles.

Just typing it makes my belly jump around! :)

Oh well at the end of the day it can all be boiled down to this simple line....

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!

Happy trails!

Cardiosaurus

Here is a link to the NDW50 for you guys to have a look at.

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