Product review: Barefoot Running

Friday was an ok day after the crap weather of Thursday, early morning swim, coffee and work. it's also quite special because it is the first long weekend of spring, labour weekend. 

that means two things: a. summer is round the corner and b.traffic will be bad going north, south east or west. two million people on the roads going to the beach, the mountains, the lakes or wherever they love going; 

Kayaks, mt.'s, road bikes, surfboards, beach tables, boats and all sorts of summery stuff hangs out of cars. 

We opted to go to Ohope beach, in the the Bay of Plenty, east of the north island. 4 hours of driving and a supergood stop at a cheese factory cum coffees shop. It was a stunning day and the our little unit in the holiday park is just neat. 

So, fed by all the positive vibes from racing on Thursday, a cool friday in town and a mid spring break I decided I'd give it a try to barefoot running (BFR). We had lunch first, and a constitutional siesta. 

So...  at 4.30pm it set off wearing just my running shorts, aiming to get some brown back to my skin and a good 70min workout of BFR in the sand. The beach at Ohope just goes on and on and on, it was a balmy 18 degrees with south easterlies, I was running north-west for the first half hour and it felt like it couldn't get any better than that. I turned around at about 7km and got a bit of head cross wind but nothing to worry. The tide was coming in so I went a bit further up the beach on softer sand. 

Towards the end of the run I started to note my big toes getting a bit itchy, I though it would be the friction with the sand causing some minor trouble. I told myself off for being so fresh about BFR and doing such a long workout with no previous slow start. Then I felt the right calf starting to get tight. But it was only 10 more minutes to get back to the start, so I just sucked it up and kept running. 

When I stopped I checked my plants and there they were, two big blisters the size of a 2 dollar coin, one on my big toe and the other on the ball of each feet.

I went on stretching for 10 mins or so to loosen up the calves and quads and gluteals.

Overall I'd rate BFR 8/10. It is a good change from the weekly routines, in my case it makes me work harder with the lower calf and not that much with the gluteals. I did a few efforts to try it out and my stride is pretty much the same, but it still feels a bit jumpier than shoe running. 

On another note, I found a new bike, but I didn't bring it with me so it has not been tested yet, there will be more to come on that front.

Product review - All good bananas

Nat and I try to be as good consumers as we can to reduce the environmental impact of our choices and trying, where possible to give a hand as much as we can. None of us is a fundamentalist in the field, but where possible, we make the fairer choice.

A couple of months ago we discovered All good bananas in our local supermarket. Being marketed as NZ's only straight bananas, we bought to give them a try.
These guys have a pretty good concept, sell bananas and ensure the profits reach the producers in equal shares as they reach the middlemen. They took some time to set up the chain, but now it works OK for the producers, for the people that sells them in NZ and I'd say for us as consumers as well.
Contrary to other fairtrade products (coffee and chocolate, for example) these bananas are same or better than the regular philipines or ecuador bananas we buy in our supermarket (fairtrade cofee or chocolate sometimes is not as great tasting) and even better, they are free of agrochemicals.
In terms of pricing, they are not that far off the mainstream bananas ($3.50 for half a dozen vs. $3 for half a dozen) and most of the bunches I've seen don't bring the noughty black banana hidden in the middle.
The arch of the banana seems to be according to the standards provided by the international mathematical union in terms of the progression of the angles. The yellowness complies with NZ standards and the smoothies taste good according to me, so all in all it's a good product.

I'm rating these babies 5/5 and I'll buy them again and again and again. Hope the ones of you that live in NZ do the same, everyone counts to make a bit for a better world.

In training news, we've received the last bit of programme leading to Budapest. It looks tiring enough and has a few new additions (supersets and motor vehicle pacing) which will be fun to watch. Wed. was the usual swim and run. I tried new gear arrived from the states. I'm so surprised with the quality of the fabric of the free yourself tee that I may use it on top of my race suit, he he he. 

Today and tomorrow I'm running behind schedule at the office, so may not appear on the web for some time. 

keep training hard and racing harder, 

Date: 11 Aug /// 12 Aug

Sport: Swim/Run /// Bike/Run

Time: 60min/72min /// 70min/11min

Dist: 3.3km/16km /// n/a / 2.5km

Comment: I'm training tired and I can feel it. It is a good sign.

New Toys and getting ready

This is a mixture of the week that was with product review and some thoughts about the race. As you may have guessed, the week had been busier than I thought and blogging was somewhere down the list, just after Rest and Recovery.
But I made it, and it surely won't repeat until post race. I had quite a bit on my plate with work being surprisingly busy for winter months, plus a practical to do at uni and house chores to be done. August started with an easy week at training, but I didn't find it easy allright. After Monday's swim PB and steady run I was happy for both my PB and my recovered leg. Tuesday was a normal gym and bike day with plenty of time to recover, Wed swim was not easy at all, coach has decided to start trialling some core conditioning excercises in the middle of hard swim sets; it was fun and tiring, so all good in that department.
Which brings us to Friday. As I said, we had a coversation with coach and we will vary the traditional speed sets. They will be about the same lengh in time (30 to 45min), but the rest intervals will be active in the form of some killer excercises (thrust squats, lunges, power ab crunches, and more). Friday was the test set and I can say I feel it today.
Saturday is the end of the hard week, there was no bike ride on the brick session and the swim was steady but not hard. Tomorrow we start straight on another couple of hard weeks. This is the time were the weight loss kicks in. I'm in big need of some weight loss. Not that I am over it, but it comes handy for the race. I am always pretty steady on 72kg and I should have a more integral approach to nutrition, matter is that I never got around to include it. So, in the next couple of weeks, no matter how much I eat, I still end up a bit more ripped than before, and that's something I am looking forward.
I also got my new toys. A friend sent an email with very cheap prices for shoes on an online store, I got in there and left 200 dollars poorer and 2 pair of trainers happier.

The first one to review is the Adidas Response Stability shoes. As the name indicates, the shoes are all about having a stable foot stroke. They offer support on the heel, arch and forefoot and great cushioning. They look like quite heavy tractors, suprisingly, though, they are not. They are buky, but they don't weight a lot. On the presentation side, the colours are the typical dull combination of reds, silvery greys and whites, I'd rate them very conservative on that department. I was afraid the first runs would be hard on the lateral musles of te lower leg and I was right. I overpronate and tend to wear shoes on the inside quite fast, so this should only take a couple of more runs. The soles are nothing fancy and you can wear them outside the tarmac, but I wouldn't go go use them off road as a default, they are not as agile. I still haven't found a brand of shoes that can grip my feet as Adidas so my final say is 4/5 due to the poor looks and boring sole.
Tomorrow is race day, so I'll be late and tired, hopefully, though, I'll bring a happy report
Happy training everyone!