4th Annual Thanksgiving Day Ultra/Marathon

I had the most amazing running experience of my life today. Julian and Alex Romero orgainize this guerilla style marathon running the LA marathon course every year at Thanksgiving. The one and only Ken Bob was the mobile Aid station in the car and sometimes running with us as his wife took the wheel. Those guys actually ran to the starting line!

I joined the group near my house..I figured I'd jump in and run a few miles until I couldnt keep up. Alex's marathon PR is 2:40 and Julian's is 2:47. There were 9 total people including the Ken Bob aid wagon in our clan. The only barefooters were Alex,Julian, Ken Bob and myself. I was in hog heaven! These are all the guys I have read about and looked up to and here I am running shoulder to shoulder with them!

I couldnt believe how light Julian, Alex and Ken were on their feet. Very gentle, yet fast and effortless. We got kinda lost at one point and I was having a blast so I didnt care. We ran some gnarly terrain and had some good hills in there too. When we make it the Beach, its a beautiful day, I am running with Ken Bob on my right shoulder and Julian is directly in front of us... as we hit the beach I am at mile 12 and the pace keeps getting faster it's sitting at 7min pace at that point. As we get to the boardwalk and hit mile 13 for me its mile 35 for them!! We decide to race the last mile back to the pier...we pick a starting point and we hit it and we are off and flying! Alex is immediately like....gone...Julian right behind. I am pushing at a 6 min pace and watching them disappear towards the pier. I am huffing and puffing and choking on my own spit at 6 min pace at mile 13 ... I finish, we all finish, joy!

I end up with 14 miles and Julian and Alex end up with 36 and the others 37! Those guys actually ran to the starting line!

Everybody there was so talented I felt so lucky and happy to be around such talent and such interesting folks!

The bonus was at the end Ken Bob gave us all Running Barefoot tye dyes!

Happy Thanksgiving!

52 miles

I am late entering last weeks miles as I have been crazy busy at work. I decided to cut miles as I was getting kinda grumpy and insane. 52 is easy at this point.

74 mile week

My biggest week to date, 74 miles. I was supposed to be tapering but I got bored and I am still not sure if I am gonna do the mountain race. I did manage to get in my first barefoot Interval workout at the track, which is my first track session since my transition. I noticed while doing the intervals that my posture felt so much better than it used to in shoes when running hard (5:45 pace). I didn't feel like the space shuttle re-entering the atmosphere! It will take awhile to get used that crappy, spongy, textured surface on the track but I do like not having to worry about cars. I also got in a hard farltek session on some trails in my Luna Sandals, a mini-long run of 10.5 mi. barefoot through the streets and a bunch of other miles! This week will be less. I hope. ;)

Quality control

Hola,
This past week had a lot of quality hard running in it. I reduced mileage to 43.2 but put the pedal down.

The week's speedwork was all done barefoot:
I did two 5 mile Tempo runs in the 7:28 range on the streets. I did an interval/fartlek session which consisted of 10x100 meter on a grass infield and 6x 2min. hard 2 min. easy on a concrete loop.

I was starting to taper this week for the trail mountain race but I dont think I am going to do it. I dont want to wear anything on my feet and the terrain is just gnarly and I will get blown away by guys I know I could beat if I either A. Had something on my feet or B. Ran on another surface.
I think I will shoot for a 5k on the streets in January.

I dunno...my buddy Shack is gonna be there.. I guess I'll barefoot the biatch!

Adios,BURT

70 miles of pure fun

Hola Compadres,
I managed to get in another 70 miles of running this week for a total of 244 for the month of October. The mileage felt quite easy even though I did much more HARD running which was mostly done on trails. Easy until I decided to double on my speedwork day with a hard paced Mountain run...which was like running up and down a wall for 7.5 miles after a hard 6 mi. fartlek workout in the morning. I was whipped after this and didn't even have the ability to mutter much of anything and laid lifeless facedown on the floor at home. It seems I could run forever at an easy pace, so I figure it's time to raise the bar.

I am now gonna cut miles and start hitting the track. Time to get some speed in these legs. Gonna work on my mile time. Rest this week and then I gotta do a barefoot mile time trial next week. Happy Halloween!

Adios,BURT

Santa Monica Mountains Sunday, 21 November 2010 9k

My next race is a real mother! It's in the Santa Monica Mountains 5.3 miles with a 1,300 ft elevation change. I got to get back to running in the Mountains like I did over the summer or I am a dead man. This weeks long run will be in the Mountains. My buddy Shacky is running the 50k which is just insane.

http://www.pctrailruns.com/Santa_Monica_Mountains.htm

Happy trails

This week I managed 54 miles. I actually started doing some formal speed work. My Speed or lack there of has come up quite a bit in discussions lately. Speed hasn't been a real concern since learning to run barefoot. My focus has really been on running as much as possible (base training) and running lightly and gently in a way that causes minimal carnage. In the Last 4 weeks I have run 235 miles! This is monumental in my training.

A few points high points from the week included my first interval session in ages. I did them on a .25 trail loop in Luna Sandals. My long run was 13.5 miles in barefeet on the streets, 2 miles of the run on the local track at a comfortably hard pace...the rest was a very easy pace.