barefoot treadmill

So, there’s this treadmill in the garage. It’s been buried for a while under junk. I’ve never used it. Hilary used to use it. Actually, I have tried it a few times but have never been able to get a smooth stride going on it. I always felt like the track would brake for an instant every time my foot touched down resulting in a halting, jerky ride. But that was running in shoes with a heel strike.

Today, given the “rain day,” I thought I’d unbury the treadmill and give it another try. It turns out: one, the treadmill still works; two, running barefoot on the treadmill is a lot smoother. Actually, not entirely barefoot, I wore socks for some reason. But it felt great. Seems like a good place to practice barefoot running.

I didn’t exactly push it. I only went for five minutes. But I think if it’s raining tomorrow I might give it a longer test.

One note about the treadmill, and maybe this was just because I’m not used to it, it seemed like I was running faster than the speedometer was indicating. Maybe just wishful thinking. When I was running at what felt like a normal pace I was going about 1 or 2 mph slower. Maybe it’s just a calibration problem with this particular treadmill. At any rate, I would probably pay more attention to perceived effort and elapsed time to measure a treadmill run.