On Sunday, January 18th, was the San Diego Marathon in Carlsbad, CA. It is one of the perennial favourites of SoCal athletes and I always like going to this well-orchestrated event.
Upon arrival at the Expo on Saturday, I had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow Penguin Bill Hermann. He was quite busy as I registered for the event there (Hint: REGISTER EARLY!) then I toured the rather extensive Expo and saw many of the vendors with whom I have worked before.
I also picked up the race packet for a friend of mine, Ken Saxton, who is well known as being the "Barefoot Runner". He is recognized all over the U.S. and many publications have featured him for his lack of wearing shoes -- not only during running, but always. He also has a web site describing barefoot philosophies and mechanics of barefooting at runningbarefoot.org. Ken and I have run together unshod many times and I have been doing more of that recently as well -- mainly due to my own stubbornness about having to buy a new pair of shoes!
Ken always takes the SDM easy and uses it as a training run for the T-Mobile Pacific Shoreline Marathon in Huntington Beach - this year on February 1st. So again for 2004 we decided early on that we would run together.
Last year during the SDM, Ken and I took a swim in the Pacific Ocean at Mile 22. I recall my saying, "Wanna go?" to which he replied "Uh, OK". The only problem was that after our swim with about four miles left to go, Ken had to wait for me to dry my feet, then put on my shoes and socks. I am sure that I was throwing him off his pace!
So this year I did not want to slow him down any more than need be. Even though I had pondered it beforehand, while in the starting grid I made the final decision to run this year's race barefoot too! I thought that would be a bit of a challenge since I had never run more than 7 miles barefoot and Ken had warned me beforehand that San Diego was not one of the more "barefoot friendly" marathons. Oh well, again, it was that ol' marathon credo of "trying something new..."
So, the short version is that the run as always was well organized and the bands along the way helped the miles pass more quickly. There were some rough spots along the roadway surface, however, which were challenging for me but easy for Ken the veteran barefoot marathoner. I think Ken took a bit of morbid pride in announcing to the folks we were passing:
"This is Todd's first barefoot marathon!" Then in a lower voice he would add, "Of course, he has run over 150 other ones ..." What a loon!
Jon Gissberg of Seattle also ran barefoot and finished handily. You know how hard it is to pick a runner out of a crowd by looking at their upper bodies? After a while, all the shirts kinda look the same. Well, it was easy for us to tell one another in a crowd because it was much easier to look for bare feet!!
Again at about mile 23 we took off for our swim as we had advertised we were going to do to our fellow participants and had asked them to go along. After about a 15 minute dip, the toughest part of the marathon was to re-enter the race where we left the course due to the strong rip tide!!
The remainder of the run was nice due to our (now-lowered!) core temperatures! We picked it up a little toward the end even though we didn't really mean to for a 4:27:58 finish (including the swim) which was about 1.5 minutes faster than Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona the week before. For me, it goes to show that fun should definitely be a part of my runs -- not just constantly looking at a watch/HRM or GPS. But then again, I don't have the technical expertise to figure those things out anyway!!
The day after I got out on a 25 mile bike ride and was a little concerned that the bottoms of my feet would hurt some in the clips. Turns out that my fears were unfounded and nothing bothered me during my 9 minute pacing run with the Nike Club Run LA run that evening either. Luck/Good execution -- whatever -- I'll take it!!
While my experience was pleasant and I had a good time running this marathon barefoot, I would definitely attach the caveat "Don't try this at home". It is interesting to do it, but for the Las Vegas Marathon next Sunday I believe I may wear my Nike Air Zoom Elites!!