So... after a few months of relative inactivity I started running again, and exclusively barefoot.
During the first ten days I did nothing more that short distances, starting with about 100 m, resting a day, 200 m the following day and so on...
This week I started with a scheme comparable to C25K.

Until today, I always ran on the smooth concrete of the road heading east from my house, but today I took the other direction, which means a couple of hundreds of yards of rough asphalt (pebbles 1-2 inches across) and then the chip-seal with fine gravel of a tow-path along a canal.

I was out for about 25 minutes, 9 of them running.

But what I noticed and thought was weird, was that it was easier to run on those rougher surfaces than to walk...
(And the last 100 yards... back on the concrete... it felt like I was walking on velvet...)

Is this a common observation, that on rougher surfaces it is easier to run than to walk, or is it just me?

So Ann, it's been a few months - how's the barefoot running now?

My theory is that when running, the foot is touching the ground for a much shorter time than when walking, so you don't have time to feel things as much. Plus, your feet "compensate" for a lot of road debris/roughness that you wouldn't notice while running.

But chip seal and 1-2 inch "pebbles" in the pavement is too rough for me. The roads and paved paths I run on are very nice and smooth in comparison.