I have a couple of friends who, after having completed their first marathon have pretty much stopped running. I guess the level of commitment to training meant running became less enjoyable, and a short break easily turns into a long one.

From early on in my own marathon schedule I had decided to start training for a barefoot half marathon as soon as my ‘A’ race was over – something to look forward to while I was on those long, cold and wet Sunday morning runs!

So two days after my marathon I went for an easy 2 mile barefoot run with Fergus (our family dog); the beginning of two to three months of sole conditioning I believed I needed to get up to 13.1 miles.

Three and a half weeks later I go and run the half marathon distance barefoot! I didn’t set out to do this, I just never got round to putting on my vibrams on a long road run. I will say the last two miles took some concentration, and the final half mile required the use of some front lawnage! But no blisters, etc on final inspection, and I my feet felt fine walking Fergus barefoot a couple of days later.

I will need some further conditioning before I enter an official race, as the ground surface will be an unknown factor, and I want to feel more confident in the final miles. But this process has happened a lot quicker than I initially thought, which I’m ‘sort of’ pleased about.

So I’ve had to rethink my running plans for the next couple of months, and the outcome is….to train for a mile – the fastest mile I can run!

A rather enjoyable 3 x 1 mile interval run on Saturday gave me the inspiration to aim for the faster pace.

This should also fit in rather nicely with where I am at the minute:

1. Shorter training sessions – to free up some time.
2. Barefoot warm ups and cool downs – to continue conditioning those feet.
3. Mix up the running – anaerobic runs after all that aerobic stuff.
4. Become faster at the longer runs later in the year.

Also, having looked into local-ish halves during late June to Early August, it seems there’s not many scheduled. The only two suitable races have been cancelled this year, so it looks like September or October will be the earliest half available.

As fortune would have it, Marathon Talk should start the “The Magic Mile” (link from 2011) campaign in a few weeks. I would have liked to have taken part last year, but I was training for my second half marathon, and was also transitioning to vibrams.

I’m really looking forward to trying this and shall be posting my Magic Mile progress over on dailymile.