I love trail running barefoot. There's something primal about getting out there in the woods and letting nature take you through the tides of the land. I've found a really great trail marathon that I'm most likely going to run in late April. (trailmarathon.com).
About half the trail is perfect for barefooting. Packed dirt, little bits of sand, relatively few pebbles, or hills with roots. The other half or so is far above me, or perhaps beyond me. We're talking gravel, on uphills and downhills (the course is either going up or going down really, there is no middle). This isn't the driveway gravel either, some of it is in the bigger chunk category. I would love to be able to run it barefoot, but I was only able to complete it yesterday ( 8 miles ) while wearing VFF. My feet made it out OK, with only some bruising from a few missteps.
Does anyone have any advice for running in those conditions? (besides small strides, light steps ;-) )
Creator of RunForth | @robraux | shodless.com
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Sumdeus- I'm running the Hallucination 100 in a few weeks (one of the Run Woodstock races)... I think it is run on the exact same loop. I ran the course a few weeks ago... you're right. The rocks on the hills are brutal. The problem, as you ell know, is the good parts and really, really bad parts are mixed together. By my estimation, there's MAYBE a one mile stretch without without tons of huge rocks (on the west end of the loop). The area immediately before and after the start/finish is pretty good, too. I plan on wearing my Vibrams for the entire loop except the area immediately before and after Silver Lake Beach. I will take the Vibrams off to let my feet dry, then do a sock change before starting another lap.
I did run one loop of the training run barefoot, but it was so slow I'd likely miss the cutoff in the actual race. If you do want to do it barefoot, my only advice would be to go slow. You have to be VERY methodical about foot placement on those hills.
Do you have any tips for me? My race is about 17 days away at this point.
Barefoot Running University- Jason's barefoot running site
Thanks for the feedback Jason. That's going to be a killer ultra. It looks like they lop off the northern part of the trail via a shortcut, but otherwise it's the same I'm planning to double loop in April.
Since i would like to get some speed behind me I may need to wear VFF the whole trip. I think it will be too slow for me to switch since it's only a marathon. Fortunately I have some time to play around with the whole thing as the park is only a 1/2 hour from my house.
I have a few tips for you (pardon me if you know all of this):
1. If you plan to run up some of the hills, I've found that the "sideways" approach works very well since they are often steep. This will utilize your lateral leg muscles. If you're interested I can explain more (I'm not an expert on this), but the only place I've seen it described well is in the ChiRunning book.
2. I had the most luck so far on the downhills taking one of two approaches:
One: Almost play dead legs, where you're simply picking up your legs and setting them down with a small stride. When my feet are relaxed, they simply flow around the rocks (sort of ;-) ).
Two: Some of those downhills were well navigated with more of a downhill skiing approach. Approach at a horizontal going one direction until reach the natural end, turn and diagonal back.
My other hope for you is that the trail is closed to mountain bilkers. That can be terribly vexing. Best of fortune and let us know how it went.
Sumdeus-
Thanks for the tips! I've been experimenting with different ascent/descent techniques recently... I plan on using a combination of techniques to spread the workload.
Since the marathon would only cover two loops, I agree that changing shoes/doing some barefoot would just be a waste of time.
I encountered a few mountain bikers on my training run... it was impossible to see them over the hills. That would make the race more interesting...