Finally did marathon debut in huaraches in Holland
By canary island feet
I had decided to seriously start transitioning to barefooting in fall 2014 after researching it and tinkering around with it. I was set back by having a back injury (unrelated to running). I also didn’t want to alter my plan to do 8 marathons this season while incorporating barefooting. I got my kilometers barefooting to over 25kms in a single session. I wanted to debut a barefoot marathon or huarache marathon in December in Irish marathon - didn't work or I chickened out. March at the Barcelona Marathon it was anticipated that there would be heavy rains, so I switched back to shoes before the race start, but then it turned sunny. At some point, I started to get TOFP and I pulled back some in April training. My new attempt at a debut at the Madrid Marathon was stopped with very very heavy rains and fear from my TOFP, but ironically after doing the Madrid Marathon at the end of April in shoes, my TOFP went away and has not come back. Why??!!
My last attempt at this season was the Leiden Marathon in Holland. I planned for shoes in case of rain on the flat course or huaraches in the case of sun. It turned out to be a great sunny day. I was able to huarache (Luna Venado) the entire marathon by taking it very very slow and finished in 4:23. My feet felt great, but my calves did feel like rocks. A few days later, my calves were back to normal. I am sold on barefooting all my training kms and barefooting and/or huarache marathoning all future races if it is dry … but I need to man up and do a rainy weather marathon.
