Before we get rolling this weekend, thanks very much to everyone who sent well-wishes for my 2012 Leadville adventure. I’m really looking forward to sharing the journey with anyone who wants to follow along, and there will probably be more than a few times along the way where I’ll rely on the support of others to get me there. So thanks for getting things off to a promising start. Now all I have to do is get ready to run 100 miles across the sky.
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Getting to the orders of business: first, apologies to anyone who tried to shop at the Patagonia fall clothing sale recently; shortly after that post went live, I was notified that the online shopping cart wasn’t working properly – which makes it hard to, you know, buy stuff online. Apparently the problem is resolved now, and when I checked this evening the cart seemed to be working fine. So you’ve still got through January 30 to take advantage of the deals, and the supply is still pretty good for most items left, since nobody else could buy stuff there last week either. Click here or use the banner link below to go to the sale:
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I’ve been fortunate to exchange several e-mails with David Sypniewski, CEO and founder of SKORA shoes, who has provided me a couple of pairs for testing and review. These shoes have been discussed, described, and anticipated for nearly three years, and they’re finally ready to debut on the market – but if you can’t wait long enough for some reviews to be published, they are now available for pre-ordering from the SKORA website.
SKORA BASE, available February 2012
The estimated release date is mid to late February, and they’re available in men’s sizes 8-12. Shipping is free to the lower 48 states, which is a good thing when the price tag of one of your models approaches 200 bucks (the one pictured above retails for $125). Will SKORA justify the cost and the anticipation? My verdict is still out, but if you want to decide for yourself, go check out the website to pre-order your own.
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Now for the winners of this week’s granola bar bonanza, who need to e-mail me their shipping addresses so I can pass them along to the company reps. The winner of the CLIF CRUNCH bars is Becca, and the winners of the NOW bars are Benjammin’ and Jim Hansen. Congrats to you, and thanks again to CLIF Bar and NOW Bar for sponsoring the giveaway. Let’s all meet back here on National Granola Bar Day 2013 and do it again, shall we?
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Finally, this weekend’s Random Shot of Beauty comes from a long overdue morning with my 13-year-old, whose regularly scheduled father/son bike ride has been bumped by poor weather and his dad’s crazy work schedule for the past few weeks. All the pieces fell into place today, so we took advantage of the occasion to test ourselves on one of the toughest climbs in Monterey County – and eventually we made it:
A boy and his bike, as seen from the top of Ollason Peak in Toro Park, with the Monterey Peninsula stretching into the bay far off in the distance (click photo to enlarge). Happy father not pictured … but he certainly doesn’t need to be.
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With all the recent giveaways around here lately, it’s beginning to seem a little bit like Christmas in January. (And on that note, you ladies have one more day to enter my Run Barefoot, Run Healthy book contest.) The contest train keeps rolling next week – but in the meantime, I’ve been delinquent in writing about any actual running to go with all my rambling. The good news is that I finally have some semblance of a race calendar sketched out. It’s not super dense, but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up in quality. The bad news is that I’m going to hold off just a bit longer before going into the details.
In the meantime, I want to tell you about a tree. It’s a tree that I run past fairly often in one of my favorite parks, whose appearance is very distinctive for reasons that will become obvious shortly. Whenever I run past the tree, I feel like there’s a story waiting to be told … but I’m not sure what exactly that story might be. Perhaps it might be symbolic of something, or portray some larger meaning that’s applicable to our own lives; perhaps instead of a story, it could more rightly be called a parable.
Since I never know for certain, I tend to make up the parable in my head after I pass by the tree – and the version that follows is a decent representation of what I usually come up with. Let’s call it the Tale of the Splitting Tree.
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In the middle of a sunny valley there stood an oak tree. It was tall, strong, and majestic, and captured the attention of all who wandered past. The tree was so beautiful that it was a source of great pride among everything in nature that contributed to its development.
Two elements of nature, the earth and the sky, each wanted to claim the tree as its own, and often argued as to why they should be the rightful recipient of praise for the majestic oak.
“I protected this tree before it was even born,” said Earth. “I nurtured it in fertile ground, provided rich soil for its growth, and left plenty of space for its roots to anchor themselves. If not for me, this tree wouldn’t be nearly as tall, strong, or majestic as it is today.”
“I sustain this tree every day of its life,” replied Sky. “I give it fresh air to breathe, water to quench its thirst, and sunlight to remain healthy. If not for me, this tree wouldn’t be nearly as tall, strong, or majestic as it is today.”
Earth and Sky happened to be siblings, so one day when their argument turned nasty, they called upon their Mother Nature to determine who was more responsible for the tree’s beauty.
“True beauty isn’t to be possessed,” Mother Nature responded, “It is to be shared. You have each contributed to the majesty of the tree, so you should share your joy and pride with each other, along with all the other elements in nature.”
The siblings were dissatisfied with their mother’s answer, and insisted that she declare one of them more deserving of praise. “Your request is impossible,” said Mother Nature. “You have each played equal roles in the tree’s development, and with this knowledge you should be content.”
But Earth and Sky were far from content, and refused to accept the notion of sharing the tree equally. They continued to bicker and argue, and finally wore down their mother’s patience. Saddened that her children failed to see the error of their ways, Mother Nature lashed out in anger to demonstrate the folly of their greed and possessiveness:
Earth and Sky were shocked and saddened, but finally understood. From that point on, they recognized that beauty can't be possessed, and agreed to share their joy and pride for all of nature’s creations.
As for the tree, it remained beautiful - in some ways, even more so than before.
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Before our usual weekend photo, let's take care of business for the ZYM electrolyte tablet winners:
Mikey, Andy, and Captain Suburbia: E-mail me your address - you've each won a tube of ZYM Rival tablets. To everyone else: thanks for playing, and stay tuned for my GU Brew tablet review and giveaway within the next few weeks.
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In honor of the recent St. Patrick's holiday, I decided to make this weekend's offering a random shot of greenness:
(click to enlarge)
The hills of Toro Park, where I've been spending an awful lot of miles lately. This time of year, when winter rains turn the normally brown and yellow landscape into an emerald Eden, is probably the second prettiest season in Monterey County.
So what, you ask, is the first? That would be wildflower season, which is right around the corner.
Since most of my ultra-long training runs are done solo, there are many mornings when cattle are the only living souls I see on the trails. Sometimes when I'm lacking motivation to get out of bed early, I'll imagine that the cows are expecting me - like they're holding me accountable to get my mileage in.
And if that sounds a little weird ... OK, yeah. It's weird. So be it.
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One of the first things they teach you in elementary school English classes is that every good story needs a beginning, middle, and end … but this post goes against convention in some regards, in that I really don’t know how the story begins. I’d love to find out someday, though.
This much I know: the story involves a small airplane - one that met with an unfortunate fate. The ending is clear, but the beginning and middle of the story are something of a mystery. Every now and then I visit the airplane and try to piece together the rest of the story, either factually or in my imagination. And by “visit”, what I really mean is “take a pretty cool trail run and make up crash theories to mentally preoccupy some of the long miles”, but you probably already guessed that.
The location of our story is Toro Regional Park (click to enlarge any of these pictures), home to rugged hills, steep canyons, beautiful vistas …
... and cows. Lots and lots of cows.
Most of the outbound trail is a gradual uphill climb that takes you past remnants of the old rancho days of Monterey County, such as this corral where early settlers kept livestock and lived off the land, but now is little more than a vacant echo of a time gone by.
The trail continues up to a high meadow where, after a rainy day …
… these kind of tracks are pretty common. A few weeks ago, several people pointed out my lack of expertise in confusing cougar prints with coyote paws – but there’s no mistaking these kind of tracks …
… especially when the owners are relaxing just around the next bend in the trail. These are the pastures of heaven that Steinbeck described so eloquently, and the fact that I can find myself here with a relatively short trail run is a continual source of amazement for me.
And whatever the ranchers were serving for breakfast that morning must have been pretty good, since no one seemed particularly bothered by my presence.
I bid goodbye to the cows on the high meadow, and started a long descent down the opposite side of the ridge …
All the way to the base of Harper Canyon, where the open vistas are replaced by thick tree cover, and the trail narrows to a meandering single track climbing into the steep valley …
… and back and forth across a seasonal stream. I did this run just a couple of weeks into our rainy season, so the ground wasn’t quite saturated enough to run off into the stream bed – but in another month or two, several sections of this trail will be submerged in a few inches of water.
Despite its shoddy appearance, this bridge is actually fairly safe. I know this because the first time I ran on this trail, I had my training partner go over it first. Partners are great, aren’t they?
The trail eventually splits between a saddle that leads to the top of the ridge, and the generally unmaintained Airplane Trail. Maybe this is just me ... but if you were in the middle of a steep, narrow trail, miles removed from any roads and saw a sign labeled “Airplane Trail”, you'd pretty much have to see where that leads, right? I thought so.
Shortly after the trail juncture, the first sign that something is out of place: instead of a standard wooden footbridge, you cross the stream on what looks to be a metal floorboard from a single-engine aircraft. A little further up the trail you notice something that is definitely out of place:
Part of the airplane fuselage that came to rest in this little clearing. What’s especially interesting about this fragment is how far removed it is from the rest of the aircraft …
… which lies another tenth of a mile or so up the trail.
There are conflicting local theories about what exactly this plane might be. Some think it was a piloted single-engine aircraft that ran into trouble shortly before approach or after takeoff from Carmel Valley’s rural airstrip a few ridgelines away from here. Others think it was an unmanned military-type drone from the nearby Fort Ord Army base that crashed and was conveniently forgotten.
I honestly don’t know which way I’m leaning; it seems awfully small for a person to have fit inside, but canary yellow isn’t a color I normally associate with military aircraft. One thing I’m certain of, though: regardless of how the story might have begun, it darn sure didn’t end well.
After gawking at the wreckage for a while, you have to retrace your steps to return to the trail junction and climb out of the canyon, leaving the mystery of the airplane shrouded under the canopy of oak trees behind.
A few random notes about this picture at the top of the canyon …
1) Yes, I’m fully aware that in the last couple of self-photos I’ve published, I appear to be carrying a few extra pounds than in my crazy ultra-racing days of last spring and summer. All I can say in my defense is, it was January, and I’m working on it now. (Um … sort of.) 2) I’m wearing one of the first-ever logo shirts from Wilderness Running Company, which I’ll review here as we get closer to spring. You’re probably not going to believe this, but at one point I thought the shirt might literally kill me. And now I love it; I’ll explain it all later. 3) Vibrams, baby. Vibrams.
By this point of the run, you’ve earned your mileage, and the only thing left is to enjoy a long gradual descent back towards the Salinas Valley, with one half of your mind absorbing all the killer views, and the other kicking around crazy airplane crash scenarios. Or maybe that’s just me.
Although the story of the airplane isn’t properly told without a real beginning, I find it fairly compelling anyway - it’s one that I find myself returning to from time to time, perhaps hoping to glean some piece of information or cobble together some theory that I didn’t have before. Either way, it keeps me interested, which should always be the goal of good storytelling – whether my former English teachers agree or not.
In an earlier training update, I described how my evolution as a barefoot runner was something of a “two steps forward, one step back” progression, with gradual improvements occasionally knocked for a loss by something stupid or unforeseen - or sometimes, stupidly unforeseen – to make me question why I’m doing any of this to begin with.
Last week was another one of those setback days, as I put my newfound confidence as a barefoot trail runner to the test in a new, yet very familiar setting: Toro Regional Park in Salinas, one of my favorite playgrounds in all of Monterey County.
I never really need a reason to run in Toro Park, but I was looking forward to this particular outing for a couple purposes. Primarily, I wanted to see if the good vibes I experienced on my last barefoot trail run would carry over to a different type of terrain. But also …
… I wanted to check on one of my favorite trees. It had been a few weeks since I’ve been on this particular trail, and I knew that this tree explodes in brilliant reds and browns during the winter months. Seasonal changes in Monterey County tend to run several weeks behind the normal calendar, so I’ve still got a few weeks before the colors here start to get spectacular. (And to assure you I’m not making this story up, I’ll keep posting pictures from this tree into December and January. Trust me, they’ll be cool.)
The outbound leg includes a few sections of gently groomed single track, which I’ve start to become more comfortable with. However …
… there are also some fairly treacherous sections, such as when the trail wanders through a small eucalyptus grove. The hard seeds of eucalyptus trees are super painful on bare feet, and they’re abundant enough that it’s very tricky to pick your way around them. Through stretches like this, I’m always reminded of Marlin and Dory hopping through the jellyfish forest (scroll to 3:15 mark): I can bounce from one safe spot to another pretty effectively at first, but eventually I know I’m going to get nailed.
The fire road eventually enters a clearing and climbs for a total of nearly three miles before a low ridge line that meets the connecting return trail. My feet had nearly recovered from the eucalyptus beating, so I decided to play around a bit …
… by experimenting with some action shots using my camera’s self-timer. This is the one that came out best – and I’m not going to say how many attempts came out poorly. I’m not exactly an expert at this stuff yet.
I eventually reached the connecting trail, where I normally enjoy some sweet views of the Salinas Valley on my return trip. However, although I had only traveled a few miles at this point, my feet were really beginning to hurt. It wasn’t anything muscular or joint-related; but all of a sudden the bottoms of my feet were feeling completely raw and vulnerable. The rough trails were taking their toll.
Instead of being in the moment and soaking in my surroundings, I had to keep my eyes nailed to the ground, constantly searching for the best footfall. It reminded me of the last several miles of an ultra, where most of the joy of the run has drained out several miles ago, and your focus is consumed by the simple task of safely putting one foot in front of the other. Whatever the opposite of runners high is, that’s what I was feeling by this point.
Needless to say, I was relieved to reach the picnic areas that cover the lower valley of Toro Park. My feet welcomed the soft embrace of the grass, but even then, I wasn’t completely in the clear …
… because the grass passes beneath some large oak trees. Know what lies under oak trees? Lots of acorns. Acorns that are nearly as hard as eucalyptus seeds, with shells that are pointy on one end. It was the jellyfish forest all over again – but this time, I didn’t have nearly enough energy or agility to avoid getting stung. Repeatedly.
Eventually I made it back to the park entrance – and instead of my usual sitting, grinning, “No worries!” post-run photo, I took this one: it’s more of an “I’m SOOOO glad to be done with this” picture. If I’m being honest, I have to say that the majority of this run wasn’t really enjoyable – in fact, it kind of sucked. It was painful. And painfully slow. The negatives greatly outweighed the positives, and the overall workout was quite discouraging.
So that’s my dilemma in a nutshell (or perhaps, an acorn): all the pleasure that I normally get from running barefoot, and from running on trails, somehow combine to create a less-than-pleasurable experience than either one does on its own. It also raises the question of what my overall intention with pushing in this direction might be.
I have some ideas about the answer … but that’s a bigger picture discussion that I’ll put off for another day. In the meantime, I’ll just chalk this run up as another learning experience, and continue exploring various paths of this ongoing adventure.
*See other Barefoot Files reports on sidebar at right
* Series note: For this barefoot running series, my plan is to provide training updates like the one that follows at least every couple of weeks – I’m hoping that if I do them somewhat frequently, they won’t be quite as lengthy as this one. Additionally, since writing the introductory post, I’ve arranged for gear reviews of Nike Free and Vivo Barefoot shoes in addition to the Vibram Five Fingers. There’s lots more of this topic to come, obviously.
** “Free – ee – ee – (Dontcha want to be) free – ee – ee (From time to time a little) free – ee – ee (Feels so good to be) free – ee – ee” - Donavon Frankenreiter, “Free” (video after post)
If the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, making that journey while barefoot would start with an extremely tiny baby step.
That’s the mindset with which I’m treading into the world of barefoot running right now – and the intent of these training posts is to chronicle the buildup in case anyone else is intrigued enough to follow. Longtime readers here can attest that I almost never detail my daily workouts, weekly mileage, or other “raw data” from training – but The Barefoot Files will be the exception that proves the rule.
There’s an ulterior motive for this policy change as well: I’m terrified of screwing something up. I don’t want to force the progress too rapidly and end up injured and frustrated and wondering why the heck I even bothered trying this. Hopefully, being publicly accountable will prevent such a situation from developing. I don’t ever mind making an example of myself, but I generally prefer that it’s for the act of doing something correctly.
"It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others" - in this case, I hope not.
Without exception, the most common piece of advice that I’ve heard is to build up to barefoot running in very small doses; the activity is a shock that your musculoskeletal system is initially unprepared to deal with for more than a few minutes at a time. In light of that, and for the other reasons above, I’m doing something else that I gave up more than 10 years ago: keeping a training log of sorts.
I’m still not tracking my overall mileage or individual workouts, but I’m logging the amount of time I spend barefoot, and on what surfaces. If it works out well, feel free to copy the model for yourself. If it doesn’t … you can thank me later for the warning.
On that note, here’s what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks:
Week 1: 3 barefoot sessions: twice for 5-min each on asphalt, once for 5 minutes on dirt.
Each of these came after my regularly scheduled run; as soon as I finished, I stripped off my shoes and socks, and kept on going. The main goal was just to get a feel for being barefoot, see what my running pattern would feel like, and how the pain tolerance on the soles of my feet would be. I also started purposely walking barefoot around the house and yard more often, instead of instinctively slipping into sandals after work in the evening.
It’s almost shocking how immediately and thoroughly your running pattern changes once you kick off your shoes: Your foot strike flattens, your knees and hips flex to absorb more impact, and your stride length becomes ridiculously short. These are the baby steps that eventually turn you into a barefoot runner, but during those first few sessions, it will feel like you’re barely making forward progress.
Which brings up another point worth mentioning if you’re going to start running barefoot: you have to accept running slowly. Embarrassingly slow, in fact. So slow that, if you were to watch yourself from a distance, your altered gait pattern and minimal forward displacement wouldn’t resemble running as much as a Native American rain dance. Throw some feathers on your head, and chances are that nobody could tell the difference.
Week 2: 4 barefoot sessions: twice for 5 minutes on asphalt, once for 8 minutes on dirt, once for 3 minutes on asphalt.
This is the period when I almost overdid it: since we were on vacation in the Sierras, I figured that I’d tried to stay barefoot for entire days at a time. With my running, I did the same routine as above, tacking a few minutes onto the end of each run. (If you’re keeping track at home, the dirt session followed the run in Big Trees park from this post.)
Predictably, I developed some sore spots on my feet: not blisters, but mild pain at some pressure spots on the underside of my foot – primarily along the line of metatarsal heads (where the base of the toes connect with the rest of the foot). The discomfort was bad enough to make me cut the 4th run a few minutes shorter than I intended, and it got me back into a pair of sandals for most of the day again.
The good news is that after a few days off, I was able to resume without problems the next week. Which brings us to …
Week 3: 4 sessions: 8 minutes on asphalt, 20 minutes on grass, 10 minutes in Vibram Five Fingers, 5 minutes on dirt.
The asphalt run was the first after the layoff, and all seemed well again. I can feel the skin on my feet becoming calloused, but right now it’s still in the stage where those formative calluses are painful – so I was seeking a little more comfort for the next two runs.
Luckily, I live close to this place:
That’s Toro County Park, which I’ve detailed in two separate posts (see photo tours on right sidebar). There’s a grassly inlet at the entrance to the park almost a half-mile long; ironically, for years this has been the area that I dismissively skirt around on my way to the dirt trails on either side of the grass, heading toward the big hills beyond. Now I see myself logging a lot of time here over the next few months. During my first barefoot run here, I only had to double back twice to log 20 minutes.
Week 3 also saw my first run in Vibram Five Fingers, a protective coating which basically allows you to run barefoot without the pain of overly sensitive soles. I’m going to do an entire post devoted to this product; for now, suffice it to say that they’re amazing.
These last two runs – one in the grass, and one with the Vibram Five Fingers - also emphasized the element of barefoot training that I’m already finding intoxicating: the feeling of absolute freedom that you get by running around with nothing on your feet. The simplistic pleasure of leaving my shoes behind never fails to make me feel like a child – and by extension, it makes exercise feel like playtime. This phenomenon will also be the subject of its own post at some point.
In the meantime, I’ll summarize this first update by reporting that after three weeks, my progress is coming along nicely, and it feels quite good to be free.
** Music note: this song and its video sometimes make me question my decision to do the marriage-career-kids thing so early in life. Sometimes I really wish I had just smuggled myself onboard a ship to Hawaii and lived as a surf bum for five or ten years. Clearly, that time has passed ... but it still feels nice to get lost in music like this every now and then.
Donavon Frankenreiter, “Free” (click to play): Read more...
Wildflowers have been exploding like fireworks in Monterey County lately, which is as good a reason as any to create little photo tour and share some of the scenery I get to enjoy on a regular basis. It’s also a nice opportunity for me to polish my photojournalism skills in preparation for the races I’ve got coming up - the first of which is this coming weekend. So let's get right to it ...
Our tour begins in Toro Regional Park between Monterey and Salinas, which I wrote about in a photo post from last year. It’s literally right across the street from the Fort Ord open space that I described in the sheep post earlier this month. In other words, if you’re an ultrarunner, this is a pretty sweet place to live.
The wildflowers are so abundant right now that some of the smaller ones are easy to miss. For example, from a distance, these little guys aren’t dense enough or large enough to color the hillside from a distance – but when you look closely, they’re all over the place. I sometimes wonder if they’re jealous of their bigger, more splashy relatives.
These guys always remind me of one of those drinking bird toys … so I call them “drinking birds”, because I have no idea what their real name is. (I know, I could look it up – but I kind of like my drinking bird name. It fits, don’t you think?)
Purple was kind of the theme of the day out here, as these lupines can attest. At least, I think they’re purple - more on that in a second.
Having dense lupine on either side of a steep trail doesn’t necessarily make the climb any easier … but sometimes it helps make the pain more enjoyable. If that makes any sense.
Here’s what I mean about the color ambiguity: my wife is convinced that my blue and purple wires are crossed somewhere in my optic nerve. We’ve had probably a thousand disagreements about intermediate shades like this, where I’ll say something is blue, and she’ll say purple – or vice versa. This lupine picture hasn’t been altered; I say it looks purple. But if you call it blue, I guess we can still get along.
Further up the hill, the yellow flowers (they’re definitely yellow, right?) start muscling out the purple/blue ones. This is also where the 1600’ of climbing it takes to get here really starts paying off – as evidenced by the killer view of the Salinas Valley in the background.
Of course, runners always have to share these pastures of heaven in Toro Park with the land’s namesake residents, who also seem to have a knack for lounging around the prettiest spots with the most breathtaking views. Really, can you blame them?
Every time I see the cows in a setting like this on a beautiful sunshine day, I half expect them to break out in song, like these gals:
(The clip above is from one of the funniest ad campaigns of all time – which I’ll write more about in my next post).
Unfortunately, I can never tell if the cows are really happy or not. Take Cow 84 here – what emotions does her face reveal? Contentment? Peace? Indifference? Irritation from the annoying clown trying to take her picture? She certainly doesn’t look ecstatic – although perhaps that #84 tag has something to do with it. That’s probably not a lotto ticket on her ear.
After a few minutes, it’s time to bid my bovine friends farewell and venture back down the hill. I must say, the cows never seem to miss me when I’m gone.
It’s totally spoiled to say this … but by this point of the run, scenes like this start blending together. More purple, more yellow, more beauty, yada yada yada. Just another run in paradise.
Off of the hilltops and into the canyons on the descent, the prominent flowers give way to the little guys again, such as these purple sweeties. (They are purple, right? Just checking.)
Eventually I make my way back to the car and head off for the rest of my day, which inevitably seems mundane compared to the experience I’ve just enjoyed. I’m not sure what it says about me that all it takes is a short run amidst a few flowers and cows to make me happy for the rest of the day … but whatever it is, I hope I can stay this way, and enjoy these moments, for a long time to come.
