Like this:

My brilliant plan to run 30 times in 30 days, thus boosting my ego, motivation, lean muscle mass, calorie allowance, fitness, and place on the human totem pole of achievement has been foiled.  The kicker is that I didn’t see this one coming: I’m injured.  Duh.  Actually, the kicker is that now I’m injured, the world of naysayers and shoe evangelists is going to blame my injury on my bare feet instead of the actual culprit which was not listening to my body.  [Insert string of frustrated curses].

Anyway, the whole purpose of barefoot running is to listen to my body so I knew I had taken a wrong turn this morning when the following occurred:

I woke up with pain in my foot for the second day in a row but was pleasantly surprised to note that is was slightly less pain than yesterday.  ”Aha!”, I said to myself “I guess I can run today after all!”.  And off I trotted to the gym before work.  Determined to complete my 30 in 30, I jumped on the treadmill and cranked it up.  One minute in things were still feeling pretty good.  Two minutes in and I am calculating that I only have 18 minutes left to have accomplished my goal for the day.  Three minutes in and I have a decided limp and the thought “I can push through this for 17 more minutes” enters my mind.  Thankfully this thought was followed immediately by “Are you CRAZY??!” and the pushing of the ‘stop’ button on the screen.

So I lose one point for running for 3 minutes and I gain one point for stopping  Which means I have zero points and a sore foot.  Better than minus one point and a VERY sore foot.

And onward goes the journey towards being less of a pig-headed runner and more of a self-attuned athlete.

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