Yesterday I picked up some nasty blisters on the balls of my feet & big toe from running barefoot on the sidewalk. Today was a toss up whether I’d run or not. The general rule I follow with any injury is if it hurts more than 3 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being when I had knee surgery or dislocated both my shoulders), or if it causes me to change my gait, I don’t run.
I used to get blisters a lot (like a couple of times a week), but after reading and implementing Fixing Your Feet by John Vonhof, I very rarely get them. Only got two tiny ones on my little toes in my marathon. He also has a very comprehensive section on treating blisters for when you have to keep running. He works with those crazy ultramarathon runners a lot lol.
While a bit painful, I have quite a bit of experience in blister care and I was able to run through the pain rather than change how I run. So on went the duct tape and off I went. It wasn’t too bad.
I thought today I’d be pretty slow due to the blisters and a fierce head wind, but I ended up doing 3.99 km (yes, 10 metres short!) in the 30 minutes at an average pace of 7:31 minutes per km, average heart rate of 150 bpm.
Why didn’t I just push a little harder to get the extra 10 metres? Especially as this is the third time I’ve come so close to 4 km. I’ve set the display on my garmin to time and heart rate. I don’t want to be tempted to go over my heart rate just to get a bit extra distance. I could easily fib and say I’d made the 4km, but I’d know. And anyone who saw my profile on dailymile would know, since I sync my garmin to it each time.