Dirt Sidewalks

I see it has been a while since I last posted, so I felt an update was due.  If you have been following my blog you can see that my summer was full.  At the end of summer we had to shift gears and start getting ready for school.  New school supplies and clothes had to be purchased.  The new schedule for my oldest daughter, now in middle school, has me getting up an hour earlier and it is taking me way too long to adjust to my new schedule.  I think she is doing better than me.

I'm still barefooting it as much as possible.  A little funny if you were a fly on the wall.  I walk everywhere barefoot, but when I shop locally I put on my vivobarefoot sandals to enter the store.  It really feels a little backwards.  Usually one takes off shoes when you enter your home and here I am putting something on.

I am attending church Sunday nights barefoot and the other day the Pastor's wife laughed when she saw I was barefoot.  Not a bad laugh, but more from amusement that I was still barefoot.  Perhaps, since summer is now over.  Not sure what funny bone I hit, but at least I made someone smile.

Today I walked to and from work barefoot and the temperatures were below 50ºF on the way in and 57ºF on the way home.  I'm wondering how low I can go, so it should be an interesting fall.  On the way home I had the opportunity to walk on a section of sidewalk that had been torn up.  As I walked on the dirt I never knew what my feet were going to encounter underneath the top layer of sand.  It was also interesting to  note, that most of the shoed people seemed to be avoiding the now sand sidewalk and using the street.



There is one problem.  I am still developing a blister of sorts between my big toe and its neighboring toe.  I've seen a coach and he informs me I need to learn to activate different muscles and gave me some exercises to help me work towards this goal.  Of course being 50+ I have a lot of muscles that are no longer being used like they should, so hopefully this will help me out in the future as well.  But today I think my posture might be the biggest culprit.

My coach had discussed with me that I needed to activate my glutes more, which I never realized I don't really do while walking.  How's that possible, I'm not sure.  I had started walking differently and did notice a difference, but all of a sudden the blister comes back bigger than ever.  I realized that I had stopped walking in the way my coach suggested.  Today I tried his method again and I think it will help the blister problem.