dear masters. 
    
With many master boomers occasionally experiencing the natural freedom and joy of running barefoot, I’d like to share something from my RunningBarefoot forum post about yesterday being the 20th anniversary of my first barefoot marathon, . . . and how a regular runner found out he could run 26.2 miles in his bare feet pretty much on a whim of the weather.

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I always appreciate reading in the daily about other masters shedding their shoes too every once in a while.   It’s long been recommended in Runner’s World, Running Times, etc. for strengthening the feet, ankles, calves and knees.  In some instances, it can promote/accelerate recoveries of both the mind and body.  In addition, if fun ever has anything to do with your running, running barefoot is the ultimate in having fun while keeping fit. 

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thanks. 

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20th anniversary of my first barefoot marathon (barefoot  jon - July 21, 1990) 

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After seeing pictures in Sports Illustrated of Abebe Bikila .running barefoot over the cobblestones in the August 1960 Rome Olympics, my high school ski team tried it a couple of times in the fall to toughen our feet for the leather ski boots of the day.   Karate lessons in the seventies were all barefoot too and a subsequent sojourn in Japan in the eighties included a barefoot hike up Mt. Fuji on a whim.

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By 1990, I’d run two or three 5K fun runs barefoot on hot summer days but annual fitness marathons for the 13 years since 1977 had all been shod.  However, when temperatures soared into the high nineties for the Goodwill Games Marathon in July 1990 in Seattle, my more northern feet at the time and I started dreading hot, sweaty shoes for four or more hours and wondered if a regular fitness runner who doesn’t train that much, if any, could run 26.2 miles without shoes. 

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To my surprise, running without shoes for the first time in a couple of years was not only cool but also without incident for doing the routine two hour training run I’d learned from a 1978 issue of The Runner Magazine (now defunct) was all that was necessary for a fitness marathoner.

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Nevertheless, to be safe, I stashed three pairs of old sneakers and sandals along the mostly smooth-paved streets of the residential and downtown Seattle course. 

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By mid-run, it was 97 degrees. The pavement burned and my soles were hot but I never stopped and never looked behind.  Seattle was the Emerald City back in those days so lots of greenery helped as I ran the shade tangents as much as possible.  When under the sun’s direct rays, concrete sidewalks were measurably cooler than the black asphalt. 

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Created to fit in between the Olympics, the Goodwill Games were the biggest event in Seattle since the World's Fair in 1962.  The international atmosphere and festivities enthralled us all and had one of the local goddesses wishing she’d done some training for the public wave of the men's and women's  marathons.  Unfortunately, the farthest she’d run before was only 10K.  However,  since she was already physically gifted in other sports, I guaranteed her running all 26.2 miles solely on the basis of a two hour marathon training run too.  It’d had worked for me for more than a dozen years by then, still did, and still does (albeit some two hours slower nowadays). It worked for her too. Even in shoes.

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When we said our wishes afterwards, mine was just  still to be able to be running barefoot marathons at what-then-seemed-to-be-a-far-into-future turn of the century in ten years.   I guess it worked.

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Thank you.

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Seattle Goodwill Games\
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1990_Goodwill_Games
*http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1990/9005140079.asp.  

Cool beans, Tetsujin! 

(ps. is that divechief in the drawing?  ...kinda hairy legs...)

I thought you ran barefoot because you are frugal.

Most others can only dream of your accomplishments.

All of us respect and admire them.

My dog runs barefoot.