Day 9 - Tuesday 16th November:
I think that you can assume that I will be barefoot all the time around the house now. My feet are getting use to the feeling of being exposed more & the cold is not the issue it was to start with (which was why I kept the socks on much of the time to begin with).
After yesterdays effort, (a 250m walk on a rather uncomfortable surface), I decided to go for another barefoot walk.
I decided to find a new surface to try today. I had thought of trying a cricket ground as I'd heard someone else suggest (in a forum) that that would be a good beginner surface (normally being closely mown level grass). I got to the place I was thinking of & there's a bike track all the way around the grass bit. The track is some sort of tarmac with very small stones, a fair bit smaller than yesterdays "mini rubble".
It was about 8 degrees C out but there had been a frost earlier. The track was a bit wet in most places. I set off on the outside of the track, got about 1/8th of the way & was starting to wonder if I'd be going very far as it was a similar feeling to yesterday, (moderate pain), even though there were fewer lose bits & the surface was smoother. Carrying on I quickly seemed to find it was now not so bad & at about 1/4 of the way around I was wondering if I'd do more than a lap.
The feeling of easy / not so easy seemed to keep changing. I also noticed quite a few more small twigs here than yesterday and, a little alarmingly, at least 3 places where coloured glass was evident from broken bottles. The colour contrast made it easy to spot the glass but it just shows that you need to look where you're going much more than "normal". I'd estimate that my walking pace was half what I'd normaly do in shoes (which perhaps illustrates the mixture of observation and careful gait).
I carried on & figured that one lap should be a fair place to stop and although I figured I could do more, the whole point is to not push it too much & blow it. As I kept going I realised that the more painful bits seemed to be in the shade so perhaps there is a strong correlation between perceived pain and temperature in these circumstances, (just a thought).
Well, I made it back to the start & decided to return to the land of shod. Learning from yesterday I'd brought along some "wet" wipes. Acutally these were what you use to help train little kids to wipe their rear end when toilet training but my youngest is 7 now so these had not been in use for years and were not at all wet. As it happens it didn't matter, they worked like a charm, removing the tiny stones & muck along with the moisture (from the track) because the wipes no longer wet.
Checking out this track & measuring it on Googlemaps it seems to be about 610m around the outside. That seems like a peculiar number but I guess that doesn't matter, it's all a means to an end.
Going from 250m to 610m sounds like I must be asking for TMTS, (OK, in a small way!) but I finished sooner that I thought was necessary and I did not think that I'd got at all close to any real complaint from my feet (even though I did experience momentary pain repeatedly from the little stones). Also, of course, I am only walking. I think I kept it all sensible. The few people seeing me there probably did not!
My feeling about progress so far: I'm happy with it
I think that you can assume that I will be barefoot all the time around the house now. My feet are getting use to the feeling of being exposed more & the cold is not the issue it was to start with (which was why I kept the socks on much of the time to begin with).
After yesterdays effort, (a 250m walk on a rather uncomfortable surface), I decided to go for another barefoot walk.
I decided to find a new surface to try today. I had thought of trying a cricket ground as I'd heard someone else suggest (in a forum) that that would be a good beginner surface (normally being closely mown level grass). I got to the place I was thinking of & there's a bike track all the way around the grass bit. The track is some sort of tarmac with very small stones, a fair bit smaller than yesterdays "mini rubble".
It was about 8 degrees C out but there had been a frost earlier. The track was a bit wet in most places. I set off on the outside of the track, got about 1/8th of the way & was starting to wonder if I'd be going very far as it was a similar feeling to yesterday, (moderate pain), even though there were fewer lose bits & the surface was smoother. Carrying on I quickly seemed to find it was now not so bad & at about 1/4 of the way around I was wondering if I'd do more than a lap.
The feeling of easy / not so easy seemed to keep changing. I also noticed quite a few more small twigs here than yesterday and, a little alarmingly, at least 3 places where coloured glass was evident from broken bottles. The colour contrast made it easy to spot the glass but it just shows that you need to look where you're going much more than "normal". I'd estimate that my walking pace was half what I'd normaly do in shoes (which perhaps illustrates the mixture of observation and careful gait).
I carried on & figured that one lap should be a fair place to stop and although I figured I could do more, the whole point is to not push it too much & blow it. As I kept going I realised that the more painful bits seemed to be in the shade so perhaps there is a strong correlation between perceived pain and temperature in these circumstances, (just a thought).
Well, I made it back to the start & decided to return to the land of shod. Learning from yesterday I'd brought along some "wet" wipes. Acutally these were what you use to help train little kids to wipe their rear end when toilet training but my youngest is 7 now so these had not been in use for years and were not at all wet. As it happens it didn't matter, they worked like a charm, removing the tiny stones & muck along with the moisture (from the track) because the wipes no longer wet.
Checking out this track & measuring it on Googlemaps it seems to be about 610m around the outside. That seems like a peculiar number but I guess that doesn't matter, it's all a means to an end.
Going from 250m to 610m sounds like I must be asking for TMTS, (OK, in a small way!) but I finished sooner that I thought was necessary and I did not think that I'd got at all close to any real complaint from my feet (even though I did experience momentary pain repeatedly from the little stones). Also, of course, I am only walking. I think I kept it all sensible. The few people seeing me there probably did not!
My feeling about progress so far: I'm happy with it
