2010 Waxhaw Town and Country 5K Recap

The Waxhaw Town and Country 5K became a fairly challenging evening for me this past Friday but I had a great time nevertheless.  The highlight of my night was  my 8 year old son, Jack, who ran his first 1/2 mile fun run and finished 4th among all kids in a time of about 3:37.  He received a medal after the race and wore it proudly for the rest of the evening.

 Jack proudly wearing his race medal.  He did not take it off until he went to bed that night.

As I mentioned in my previous post  I wore my Vibram Five Finger KSOs (VFFs) for this race.  That decision was what made the night challenging for me.  The good news is that I ran my best time of 22:09 which is a 7:08 min/mile pace.  The bad news is that my decision to wear the VFFs tore up my feet .

Before you start thinking that VFFs should not be used for street running, the reason my feet got wrecked were not any fault of the shoes.  My lack of street training in my VFFs are the sole blame for the damage to my feet.  Prior to this run, I trained only twice on asphalt - last Monday running 1:05 miles with my son Jack for a little over 10 minutes and Wednesday we ran 1.65 miles in around 17 minutes.  That was it for street training and running in my VFFs!  Running two times during the week of the race at a pace much slower than my usual pace is hardly what I would call proper training.

Keeping all this mind, I now had to run a hilly course on the streets of Waxhaw for 3.1 miles and at pace I  haven't run since last November's Matthew's 5K.  I knew in the back of my mind before the race that the VFFs were probably a risky choice but decided to go for it anyway.  I should have listened to my rational side and not my reckless side. Making matters worse for my feet that evening, temperatures hit the low 80s and the ground was fairly warm.  Earlier in the week when I ran temperatures were in the 60s.

When I began wearing VFFs last year my big issue was building enough foot and calf strength to run full races as a forefoot striker.  When I run trails, which I do regularly, I wear the Inov-8 X-Talon 212s which are low profile and intended for forefoot striking.  At this point strength is not an issue with my feet and calves.  Sure enough, other than tearing the bottoms of my feet during this 5K, the rest of my body recovered pain free - no sore calves or hamstrings - just really bad raw skin and blisters.

My post race feet!  What a mess!  YUCK!!

The first mile and a half were not bad as far as my feet burning but by the time we hit some downhills inside the second mile the fire started growing.  The third mile had some really steep hills and the downhills were the worst.  I was never so happy when I came to uphills and flat road as that provided some minor relief.  The regrettable part was that my breathing felt great that night.  I had plenty in the gas in the tank even towards the end but could not run full guns in the last mile because my feet burned too much.  In the end, I was still quite happy with how I finished - 28th overall out of almost 500 runners and took second in the 40-44 age group.

So my advice to anyone looking to run street races in their VFFs is to build up your speed and distance gradually in them.  Sometimes when you get in shape you feel like you are invincible and all it takes is incidents like these to bring you back down to reality.

Two weeks from now is the Uwharrie Rumble, an 8K trail run, so I need to get my feet healed quickly!  Until next time - have a great week!