ETA reminder to post any barefoot miles in Lynden/Leslie's weekly activities - thanks Run and Post Running Barefoot Miles for July Boomer Barefoot Month I. Background A. What is Boomer RunningBarefoot Month? If it’s July, it’s my running barefoot group’s RunningBarefoot Month in the PNW that boomers near and far have been running too with us real or virtual since 2006 in Cool Running days. RunningBarefoot month recognizes the benefits of running barefoot and freeing our feet and their 52 bones, 66 muscles, 62 joints, over 200 ligaments and 250,000 sweat glands. B. Mileages Recording/Accounting. 1. daily/weekly/monthly totaling - Participating boomers who already run barefoot some or part of the time or who would like to try, just post your planned and actual barefoot runs in lynden’s and I'll do the weekly and monthly totals. I bet he's already running barefoot on the beaches of his Hawaiian vacationl. . July is turning out to have a heavy trail emphasis for me so I might be wearing the thongs a bit more than usual and will need everyone’s help to accumulate as many barefoot miles as possible. Maybe with everyone else’s miles we can match Barefoot Rick’s usual 200-250 miles or so and accumulate at least 500 miles of barefoot running for all of July. 2. RunningBarefoot Festival Weekend Running (July 19-20) Especially join us real or virtual for our PNW RunningBarefoot Road and Trail Championships on July 19 & 20 wherever you are. 1. July 19 - PNW RunningBarefoot Road Championships (3.3 miles) 2. July 20 - PNW RunningBarefoot Trail Championships (3.1 miles) note: because not everyone will be able to complete an entire 3.3 and 3.1 miles in bare feet by July 19/20, it’s okay to calculate a likely pace based on running some shorter shed/shod distance and extrapolating to the event distance or other guesstimate. We can post a results list too with times or not. FYI, our trail run is really rough-surfaced rocks and takes me about one hour while the road division is usually about 28 - 30 minutes. II. How to run barefoot (see also Appendix A in separate Running Barefoot Reference thread). Though extremely enticing, running on grass can also be extremely dangerous with sunken sprinkers, bumpy lawn plugs, hidden holes, covered debris, evidence of visits by Canada geese, dogs, etc. so run on barefoot friendly, bike/pedestrian pathways, newly-paved asphalts, smooth concrete, etc. where you can see where you’re stepping. The foot/ankles/knees automatically compensate for the hardness of the running surface and the key limiting factor is smoothness. Running barefoot eschews heel landings so barefoot runners touch down on midfoot, forefoot, metatarsals, outer edge, etc. Feet must not extend in front of the torso. No"keep-on-trucking" stick-out-the-leg form. note 1: sometimes event photos will appear to portray barefoot heel landings but slow-motion analysis shows the metatarsals always drop down first for the actual landing. note 2: heel-strikers who inflict the shock of their landings on the thighs like I used to will find running barefoot to be very soothing for the thighs but very sore for the calves. It took me two marathons before I could run all the way without heel-striking but, because calves recover fast - like by the next morning, most, it not all, of the double/triple/quadzilla/quintilla/etc. megamarathoners eschew heel-striking too. Interestingly, running like a sprinter on the mid/forefeet does not have to be fast at all and my barefoot marathon PWPR is 7:09:54 running all the way with nary a heel strike. III. RunningBarefoot quotes/cite/links (good and bad) - See Appendices B-1/B-2 in separate thread. Add your own quotes/cites/links/etc. over there and I’ll edit them into a final reference post at the end of the month. Who's gunna play? Thank you barefoot jon

ooooo me me me!! And I hope you and I can shed our thongs and run barefootsies together on July 24 or 27th, Jon

thanks nono, posting along the way keeps us all inspired, especially this weekend when we have our 3.3 mile road run here in Seattle and Sunday's 5K scenic trail run. Do you see any other barefooters around there? ps - feet don't need major miles to be happy, just enough every once in a while to prove we still trust 'em to do what they were designed to do.