I took my first minimalist run of 2014 today. The air’s been so shitty here in Fresno—we get the smog from LA and The Bay, and since this is a valley, it just hangs here—so it’s been literally too nasty to go outside. But today it cleared and I carried on (4.3 mi, 8’06″/mi).
2013 was all about transitioning from my Nike+ Free shoes to the Vibram 5-fingers (a.k.a. minimalist running). A year ago, my knee hurt so bad that I couldn’t run at all, and walking was painful. So I began the transition to losing the shoes and learning some more natural (and hopefully less painful) running mechanics. To say it was a rough road is a bit of an understatement. You can read all about it, but basically I had small injuries and muscle pulls in my calves and achilles for the first half of the year, up until July, where I finally started to gain some traction.