Thursday, Feb. 3rd . . . treadmill city again . . .

Regulated to the treadmill once again. It was still hovering around -1F wind chill, so I elected to run inside again. Back-to-back treadmill days is tough for me but I got in a 45 minute easy run including .5 miles barefoot. I kept the pace nice and easy, around 8:30 pace and alternated with 2-3 minutes of 1-2% inclines to add some variety (actually to keep myself sane).

I must run outside tomorrow even if it's a very short run as I can't do the treadmill again. The challenge is finding somewhere to run with the snow/ice but hopefully if the sun comes out again today, it will melt away the remaining ice on the roads and I can get a good road run in tomorrow (no chance on the trails as they are frozen solid and way too dangerous). Hopefully by Saturday when I plan to run hard again, the roads will be pretty dry. I probably can't return to the trails for another 4-5 days given the weather conditions.

I ran in the Nike Katana's. I also purchased a pair of Adidas Adizero Rocket's today and they'll arrive in a few weeks. I like the Katana's but they have been discontinued and the replacement is the Nike Zoom Speed Racer2 which can only be sourced through China (at least my size). I have a pair on order but they may be difficult to acquire in the future so I'm looking at the Adizero Rocket as a potential replacement down the road. It's upsetting that in the U.S. it's practically impossible to find many of the best racing shoes available.

If you ever travel to Tokyo (for example) you'll see so many excellent minimal racing shoes that are quite flexible but they are not available in the U.S. because we continue to only offer over supportive, overly cushioned shoes which are not good for the feet and make it very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain good running form and technique. While I do some daily barefoot running (and I'm a big advocate of adding some amount of barefoot running to your schedule), you don't have to become a 100% barefoot or minimalist runner to develop strong feet or to acquire good form and technique. However, strong feet and good form will reduce your chances of injury, and the best way to do that is to incorporate some level of barefoot and/or minimalist running into your program. Many elites (today and in the past) have incorporated barefoot running into their program for this exact reason. You don't have to take off your shoes and run barefoot down the street (as I've done) but if you stay in motion control shoes, it will be difficult to improve.

HHH