Week Four

Good bye skinny ankles; hello caveman legs.

For decades, I’ve had problems with weak ankles and have had several intense sprains. Some sprains made me spend months in a cast. In the end the cast did more damage than the torn ligament. For me, one of the more important elements I looked for in running shoes was a wide sole. I needed this to keep me from twisting my ankle.

I have felt the strength in my ankles and calf muscles increase tenfold over the past weeks. Recently I notice how big my lower legs have become, rather caveman-like. When browsing through pictures of other fellow barefoot runners, I can see that same effect. I’m not knocking it, I like the way my legs feel so strong. I also think it looks real good on women. Not that I like cavewomen, it’s a curve thing.

Think about it. Women wear high heels to get their calf muscles to pop out and make their legs look better. With stronger lower legs, that muscle accents the leg just fine without the high heels. But, that’s just my opinion.

Back to my legs, or really my feet. When I wear shoes, I am more aware of the top of my feet because they press against my shoes now. It appears I’m building the muscles in the top of my feet (Extensor Hallucis, Extensor Digitorum).1

Another activity I have noticed in my muscles, the nightly muscle protein synthesis. This is the rebuilding of muscles that occurs after the breakdown during exercise.2 Normally this occurs while you sleep. While I am relaxing, watching T.V. and generally unwinding from the day, I can feel nerves firing throughout my legs.

One lesson I learned this week, even though I was in good shape before I started barefoot running, I should have listened to the warnings about pushing too hard too fast. This is my fourth week of BF running and I feel real good and thought it was a good time to start increasing my endurance and pushing myself to the limit, which for most runners this is actually very minimal.

As I have stated before, for decades I have not been able to run more than three miles and thirty minutes due to knee pain. Now with the pain gone, I ran for 1½ hours, don’t know the distance. It felt good while running, but that night and the next morning, ouch! I’m too old to make that kind of jump in performance. It’s back to baby steps for me.



1)http://www.footdoc.ca/www.FootDoc.ca/Website%20Muscles%20Of%20The%20Foot%20And%20Leg.htm
2)http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/short/106/6/2026