The Day of Rest

Today I was scheduled to run the red rock loop (in shoes), but I did not feel that my legs would appreciate such a run. It was really hard for me to not go run today, but I am going to try to follow a schedule by the barefoot running university to help me ease into it better. I have already ran too much barefoot and I need to let my legs recover. With all of the padding in modern running shoes, the Achilles tendon is shortened. When running on pavement without any padding propping up your heal, the Achilles tendon must stretch out. If I don't give it time to heal, it will cause injury to my tendon and calve region.
I ran in place (like the training program suggests) today for about 45 seconds. I could actually feel the pain in my shin and tendon area! This helped me to realize that I need to take it slow and ease into barefoot running.
I am going to slow it back down and start out with a maximum of 1 mile per week for the first week, and increase by half a mile until i reach 5. By that point I should be in shape enough to do more workouts barefoot and my shoe running should also drastically improve.

I went to the athlete's foot today to return a pair of running shoes that I received for Christmas. The store has a policy that only allows exchanges on shoes that have already been worn. This was a big downer for me because I was planning on taking the money from the return to buy a pair of Vibram 5 Fingers so that I could continue to run barefoot in the cold up in Reno.
It is probably a good thing that I was not able to get these barefoot shoes because it will force me to run less in my bare feet.

I did manage to exchange my running shoes for the newer model though, and they are SWEET!

Asics GT-2150