At the end of my last entry, Clear Creek Captured, I mentioned that on Saturday I’d be doing another of those 15-mile training hikes. I also noted that it would be in colder temperatures than I’d done it before, and that I’d bring footwear with me because, as I said, I May Be Crazy But I’m Not Stupid.
OK, I may be stupid after all.
As a reminder, these are organized hikes put on by the Columbus Metro Parks. Their Executive Director is climbing Mt. Everest in March, and he has invited interested people to join him at Clear Creek for some of his training hikes.
The temperature was 25° when I arrived at Clear Creek Metro Park at just before 9:00am. There was a camera crew there from 10TV News in Columbus. They are producing a special, to be shown in May, about the various ways that folks use the Metro Parks. I got interviewed. They also set up at a few points along the route to take video of all us hikers.
My feet were actually pretty comfortable. The only time they got to feeling a bit cool was when I walked across some frosty grass to hit the porta-potty.
So we started off. I was of course monitoring how my feet felt. I also had in my back a pair of moccasins and wool socks, just in case. My feet started a bit cool but gradually warmed up until we had a large unavoidable patch of muck about half a mile in. That made them cold, but we very soon afterwards starting a pretty steep climb. That dried them out and the exercise poured in warm blood.
The earlier hikes had attracted close to 20-25 people. For some reason, this one only got about 10, and the speed of a group seems to be inversely proportional to its size, so we ended up going pretty darn fast (over the entire hike we averaged pretty close to 3 miles an hour).
By 11:30am we were at the far point of the hike, and stopped at a picnic area for a bit of food and rest. My feet had been feeling fine, with maybe just a bit of numbness right on the soles. But I did all the usual checks I’ve used in the past; everything seemed fine. I even visually checked my soled and prodded them. Still fine.
By this time the temperature had risen to a balmy 28°. With it being a sunny day, this was actually pretty comfortable.
The first sign of trouble came when there were about 2½ miles to go. One of the hiker noticed that I had blood on one of my feet.
Oops. How did that get there? I felt fine; my feet felt fine. But I did recall stubbing my foot on a small stump, so maybe I had done it then. No big deal. A quick peek and I figured I was ready to continue.
I made it to the parking lot at the end just fine. I figured I’d check things out when I got home. I should mention that my feet still felt just fine, and the tops (along with my hands) were quite comfortable. By now the temperature was up to 31°.
It was only after I was driving a bit that I realized that they were starting to feel sore. While I had feeling before, as they warmed, I was getting even more feeling. And it was getting to be a bit unpleasant.
[By the way, when it comes to barefoot driving, sometimes the doomsayers will make up the excuse that breaking hard might be too much for bare soles. Well, I had no trouble breaking even with sore bare soles.]
So, when I got home I inspected things. What happened is that I’d gotten blisters on my feet, right on the ball just behind the toes. Both feet were affected, though the one on the left foot had just barely opened. But the one on my right foot had torn open pretty good. I then tended to the blisters. [By the way, I was able to measure that the skin there on the ball of my foot is about 2.5mm (0.1in) thick.]
Sunday night was tennis night. I played, but not barefoot. Because of the blisters, I just needed the extra padding. Additionally, while I might have been able to play barefoot, I think I would have worn off the bandages pretty quickly, and leaving patches of blood and blister goo on the court would be just plain tacky, both figuratively and literally. 🙂
I really had no trouble playing tennis (insert here an ode to the resiliency of feet).
[I have to add that I drove to and from tennis with my shoes on. Geez, what a horrible way to drive. I could barely feel the pedals to the point where sometimes I worried whether I was hitting the right one or not.]
So what went wrong? At first I thought I’d gotten frostbite, but I’m really not that sure that was the case. Yes, of course the temperature had something to do with it, but it never seemed as if any tissue ever froze (or even came close to freezing). When I checked my feet at the halfway point, the soles were supple. When I took the peek at the injury with 2½ miles to go, again, there was nothing frozen. It was all as flexible as usual.
My guess is that, while cold, my soles just were not as well-conditioned as they usually are. Combine that with the fact that we were all really trucking, and I was using them in a fashion that they’d never really been trained for. The cold (even without frostbite) probably meant that the tissues were not operating in their trained-zone and were more susceptible to injury. Combine that with our speed and the length of the hike, and that meant I pushed them beyond what they were good for.
I probably could have easily gotten away with a 7-mile hike, it was only the fact that I went the whole 15 miles that finally overdid things.
So, how stupid was I? Oh, a bit I’d say. I was over-confident in my abilities, even in an extreme situation that I had not experienced before. But it was also a valuable learning experience. These days, folks have so little experience going barefoot in more extreme conditions that we really don’t know the limits, or how my training is necessary for such conditions. And now, for me, I know.
Meanwhile, aside from last night’s tennis, I’m still barefoot. I’ve got the blister on my right foot patched (the left foot is fine already) and while it is a bit tender, it is quite usable.
And I’m sure it will heal up quickly.
Bob, I think we’ve all have adleast one time where we overestimated our abilities. About a year ago, I thought I was strong enough to do a barefoot hike in the snow. Unfortantly I discovered that temperatures in the 20’s, cp and bare feet are a bad combination! My legs locked and I fell over in pain. Now you would think after 28 years, I would have realised that someone with CP (i.e. me) has physical limitations, like it or not! I too had become overconfident in my abilities.
See everyone sufferes from overconfidence from time to time. Don’t worry about it; we all live and learn. Take care!
Bob, I was one of the sweeps on the hike, thus we were not going quite the speed at which you were proceeding, but we all finished the hike (except for the lake trail loop and the loop down to the road that we cut off to try to get some of the slower hikers back in a timely fashion), but by Sunday morning I realized that even with good hiking boots, the rolling terrain of the trail over a hike of that distance can really put a strain on ankles particularly. I have an old (nearly 15 years) basketball injury which involved a dislocated talus joint (the joint below the ankle where the foot attached to the leg essentially) which has become quite inflamed from the constant rolling of the footing. I guess that the bottom line is that we all may be a little stupid whether we have on footwear or not.
In quoting the words of Clint Eastwood aka Dirty Harry ” A man has got to know his limitations” LOL
It happens. I guess sometimes it’s better to reflect and think “I didn’t need to wear shoes for that” than to think “I wish I wore shoes for that.”
And hey, if you were never stupid, I’d find that very suspicious.