4 Days after my first Ultra I was recovered and not sore. The night of the 50 miler, I was not able to move very well. The following day, I was limping, but by day 3, I was almost running fully at the valet job. Remember, I hadn’t run in months by this time, with the exception of a few medium runs and a single 15 miler. Which made me wonder: was it valet that made it possible for me to do these races with no outside running? Was it the barefoot/minimalist running as well? I don’t know. Valet was only sprinting off and on and it was only twice a week. But in the 50 miler, and the running hard at the end, it made me wonder if I could go faster to begin with. I wondered if sprinting in valet was some sort of training I did not know about. If you could call that training. But I also wondered about the Vibram Five Fingers and barefoot running. How much did that affect things? All of my running injuries had stopped cold turkey when I dropped the shoes. And although I did have growing pains in barefooting, which can be expected, as well as over doing it problems, those past races were not that hard on my body and I think it has to do with the feet! Now I am really curious about possibility!
