Learning more about barefoot running or Blisters are far better than pulled muscles!

So, its friday - always a good day for countless reasons!  Today, despite my graphic pictures posted yesterday, I am able to walk pain-free.  The quick recovery from blisters sure beats the weeks of recovery required for a calf strain!  After managing to do some pretty good damage to my feet this week, I wanted to figure out how I could do to prevent recurrance of the same pain.  My wife had a very simple solution - stop running.  This was followed up with other helpful suggestions of "stop running barefoot" and "don't be such an idiot."  I decided to keep looking elsewhere for ideas.

One of the things I had looked for in the past, was a "how to start barefoot running," but finding a good "do it this way" seemed impossible.  Don't get me wrong, there are some easy to find fantastic resources out there.  Barefoot Kenbob (for some reason many barefoot runners seem to change their name to Barefoot _____.   If somehow I start foregoing shoes, I will NEVER do this.) has a great site at http://therunningbarefoot.com/ , Runners world has a great forum with "how to run barefoot" section, and there are many more sites with great information.  Unfortunately, the information you get, while helpful - isn't enough.  "start slow."  "you don't want to strain your muscles"  "you can't run as far as you do shod."   -- All great bits of information, but what does it mean?  How far CAN you go? (and yes, it varies per person, I get that - but there has to be a baseline idea!!)  I figured that a mile was starting slow, and was wrong - but I had nothing else to go on.

Yesterday, I found it.  Jason Robillard has a "Lose the Shoes: A 12 week step-by-step plan to learn the art of running a barefoot 5k."  It starts slow, gives the basics, shows pictures and warns you of what sort of pain you should fear and watch for.  And the best part? It has a 5 stage plan - with approximate time-frames for each stage to learn how to barefoot run.  I'm not sure why this was so hard to find before, but I have not found another site like it!

*Editted to add - This is my 50th Blog post!!! I feel like I should have a contest.. but I don't have anything cool to give away.  If someone wants to donate something, I would be happy to run one!