Baltic Adriatic Run 2011 - Route Planning (Books)

I am now in possession of the two books which cover the route from the top of Germany all the way to Verona.
Europäischer Fernwanderweg E1 by Arthur Krause published by Kompass covers the 1773 km German section of the E1 from Flensburg to Konstanz. It's in German but I figure that a guidebook should have a fairly limited vocabulary which I'll be able to master pretty quickly. It looks pretty detailed. The route is divided into day hikes of roughly 20 to 30 kilometers. There's a little map for each day, it tells you what waymarkers to look out for, suggests how long it should take and other stuff I haven't figured out yet.
To fit the whole route into one volume means that the maps are pretty small scale. If I'm reading it right they are 1:200,000. Each section advises what larger scale maps are available for that section. So that's good.
The second book I'm using is Across the Eastern Alps: E5 From Lake Constance to Verona by Gillian Price and published by Cicerone, one of the Cicerone Guides. This starts from Konstanz and continues along the south (Swiss) shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee), cuts across Austria, a bit of Germany again and then Austria for real and goes through the Alps. Somewhere along the way Austria becomes Italy and then it's down the hill towards Verona which is just a cough and a spit from Venice.
This book too is divided into daily sections with distances and estimated times. Now, very usefully, it also gives ascent/descent details for each section, i.e. how much hill you're gonna have to get up, which, in the mountains, is a much more serious determinant of how tough a day is going to be than distance on it's own. Every few stages are summarised by a diagram of the altitude changes which is pretty good.
The Cicerone Guide has photographs which the Kompass book doesn't. I like the pictures. I'm getting a buzz just imagining going through that landscape. But they are also useful for giving you an idea of the terrain.
The two books together weigh in at 18 ounces or 520 grams. That's an extra pound I have to carry just for the luxury of knowing where I am. The need for more detailed maps really depends on how well these routes are signposted. If I do need more detailed maps I can, hopefully, buy them and discard them as I go.
So the German section is 1773 km, Konstanz to Verona is 585 km, let's say 100 km from Verona to Venice. Oh, and I want to do a day or two in Denmark before I start the German route just for the extra boasting rights, let's call that another 50 km. That makes the whole journey about 2500 km. In english money that's 1550 miles. Sheee-it. Now that, is a run.

Baltic Adriatic Run 2011 - Route Planning

Yesterday I was thinking that I might use the E1 walking route from Kiel to Genoa and that would mean ending the run on the west side of Italy rather than the eastern Adriatic side. However, I've now found that the E5, which goes from Brittany to Verona, crosses the E1 round about Konstanz/Lake Constance somewhere. If I start out on the E1 from Kiel, go south all the way through Germany, pick up the E5 at Konstanz and follow it through the Eastern Alps to Verona then I'm just 60 miles from Venice and the Adriatic.
I know, what's the difference between ending in Genoa and ending in Venice? Well, my old friend Thomas Duncan has promised me a place to crash for a couple of days in Treviso. It would be nice to finish the run among friendly faces.
There's a Cicerone book on that last, Eastern Alps, section of the E5 which I need to get. I can feel a visit to Stanford's coming on.

Baltic Mediterranean Run 2011

So I'm thinking the Baltic/Adriatic run is probably going to become the Baltic/Mediterranean Run. It's the same kind of thing. I'm just moving it a bit west, that's all.
Starting from Kaliningrad and heading down through Poland and what? the Czech Republic? Slovakia? towards Venice was a very attractive idea but when I bought a couple of maps of Poland to start planning a route I realised I might be stretching my navigational skills a bit too far. I don't even know the capital cities of some of the countries I was going to be traveling through. I mean back in 2009 when I was running from John O'Groats to Lands End I found it easy enough to get lost in Yorkshire.
If I start from Kiel and head down through Germany towards Genoa then I can follow European walking route E1.
It's a long distance walking route so there should be plenty of off-road hiking trails suitable for running, there'll be signposts, it goes through places like the Black Forest. There's even information about it on the internet. All the information I've found so far is in German or Dutch. But that's fine.
Now, the big advantage of taking the E1 is that I have a route to follow. The disadvantage, I'm guessing, would be that Germany has to be more expensive that Poland.
Here's a thing. I could save a lot of money by cooking my own food. But a camping stove, or rather the fuel, is a heavy item considering how lightweight I like to be. I have got the bivvy bag which I have yet to try out. If I could go with the bivvy bag rather than the tent I save over three pounds in weight. That would allow me to take the cooker. But is it realistic to sleep in a bivvy bag for thirty or forty nights? I dunno.

Barefoot Running - Recovery Update

It's Wednesday morning and I've just walked (hobbled) downstairs to make coffee and walked back upstairs without spilling any. I can use the flat of my right foot (gently) and my left heel. Should be able to make it to work.
I am definitely going to make a pair of huaraches. I found a great series of videos on YouTube which show clearly how to do it. Looks pretty easy.

Barefoot Running - Too Much Too Soon

It is Tuesday evening now. Two and a half days since my barefoot five mile run.
I am still pretty incapacitated. My feet don't look that much different than they did on Sunday afternoon.

The blistering is so extensive I haven't been able to walk. I've had to take two days off work. And I've been getting around by sliding along the floor on my arse.
Today, for the first time my right foot was able to bear some weight and I've been able to take a few crutch-aided steps. But it doesn't take long for the huge blister on my left foot to start feeling full to bursting and I have to get off my feet again.
Do I feel like a complete numpty? Of course, I do.
I'm hoping that by tomorrow morning my left foot will have healed some more and I can hobble into work.
I might take a taxi.
Jeez.
I've been passing the time reading Christopher McDougall's Born to Run and researching barefoot running on the internet.
I might get myself a pair of huaraches. In fact, I might make a pair. There's instructions on YouTube. Cool.

Barefoot Running - The First Five Miles

So this morning I decide to try running barefoot. It's been on my mind to do it for some time now but today when I wake up I feel really up for it.
I do a bit of googling to see what I should do to get started but I am in the mood for running, not browsing, so I'm not taking much in.
There is, though, a clear message coming through about taking it easy to start with so I reckon, OK, I won't go for a ten miler, I'll just do a quick five.
I get up and dress for running, except my feet of course, put my Mizuno shoes and a pair of socks in my Salomon back pack and go out the door.
Ouch. Now I know what tenderfoot means. My plantar nerve endings seem to be feeling every speck on the gritty tarmac. Hell with it. I start running.
Interesting. My natural, barefoot, instinct is to avoid striking the ground with my heel. I am running on the outside and front of my foot. This is not a conscious choice, I am going with the flow here.
I am feeling socially exposed in my barefoot eccentricity but the guy around the corner spraying wax on his car through the smoke of his lip-dangled cigarette doesn't give me a second glance. Or a first one for that matter.
The surface of the sidewalk varies in its grittiness. Sometimes it is really ooo-oooh-ouch and I walk for a bit. Walking doesn't really help much because your foot is in contact with the surface for longer at a time. I run again remembering to look out for broken glass. There isn't any.
It takes me about fifteen minutes to get to the Roehampton Gate entrance to the park. This is about twice as long as usual.
But when I get into the park I pick up speed. The surface is lovely. The well-worn trail is surfaced with broken stones and packed sandy earth. It is damp and cool. My feet feel wonderful. Oh yes, this is the real thing.
I pick up speed. My stride is shorter that usual and, as I said, the footfall more to the front of the foot. Despite my tender feet I am running pretty fast. I overtake a couple of runners.
A passing cyclist shouts, 'Barefoot!', at me as he passes and gives me a grinning thumbs-up. Thanks, mate.
I am really enjoying this and am momentarily tempted to do a full circuit of the park. But there is a definite muscle ache at my right hip and stress signals from my ankles and lower calf which I put down to my unaccustomed gait. Best not push it.
I turn back at the fallen tree before I get to the first big hill and head for home.
The soles of my feet feel somewhat tenderised but they do seem to be coping with it all very well.
Oops, I stub my right toe. Ouch. Seems OK, though.
A South African cyclist passes me shouting, 'Hey, there's Zola Budd. How you doin', Zola?' Whatever.
Out of the park and back onto the pavement and the little stones and grit are really irritating.
For the first time I see some broken glass. A busted beer bottle. I dance around the shards and congratulate myself on getting through uninjured until I realise that a sharp irritation on my right sole might not be a stone.
I stop and find a little piece of glass stuck to my right foot. It's not very big, maybe an eighth of an inch long. I pick it out with my thumbnail. There's a bit of blood but not much. I continue running wondering what toxic substances and misanthropic life forms are getting into the wound.
But, you know, all in all I'm feeling pretty psyched. This has been a good experience.
Nearer home the guy is still out washing his car, buffing it now, wish a fresh cigarette on the go.
I unlock the door and step into my flip-flops which I left waiting there.
And then the pain starts. Oh dear. Now that I am not running the blood is pooling in my feet and, ooh ooooh oooooh dear. And there's blood. Not from the little bit of glass, but that time I stubbed my toe I tore a flap of skin off a blood blister and there's blood dripping onto my sandal.
I sit down and look at my feet. Jeez. I mean, what the....! Through the mud and the grit I can see that my feet are extensively blistered. About a fifth to a quarter of the surface of the sole of each foot, mostly at the side and the front, is covered in blood filled blisters.
And they hurt. Oh dear. Oh dear. There's a good reason torturers beat the soles of your feet. Because it hurts.
Somehow I haul myself all the way upstairs to my room for my first aid kit. I grab a towel and crawl back downstairs and fill a bath. There is a certain amount of groaning and some howling. And most definitely a whole bunch of whining.
In the bath there is whimpering as I clean and dress my feet. I have to keep my feet raised or else they fill up with blood and HURT!
Now here's a thing. Have you ever tried to get out of a bath and get yourself toweled dry without putting your feet on the floor? Ain't easy.
In conclusion, I really need to start taking seriously those warnings to start out easy. But, pain and mashed-up feet aside, it was a wonderful experiment. And as soon as I'm healed up I'm out there again. Without shoes.

Ten Saturday Morning Miles

Yesterday evening a three mile struggle home from work, still digesting my food from a late lunch.
But now it is The Saturday Morning Miles. The sweetest miles of the week.
This is my ten mile run. From the house to the park by way of a shortcut through the hospital and down Clarence Lane to Roehampton Gate, left into the park and then a complete circuit, the longest way around, out the way I came in and back home.
It's busy today as it is every Saturday, walkers, runners and cyclists, alone and in groups, the groups on the go already or gathering by gates, at the cafe, in the car parks.
This morning my first few minutes out the door I feel like a dead man running. I don't feel like I have ten miles in me. But going down the long slope of Clarence Lane I somehow loosen up and my breathing comes easier.
There are three and a half hills on the run and it is the hills which tell how fit I am. The first hill about twenty minutes into the run comes not far beyond Robin Hood Gate. This morning it feels tough but nicely manageable. I reach halfway a couple of minutes quicker than I expect and when I reach the second hill, the toughest of all, I am looking forward to it. I run the long flat section towards Pembroke Gate and then instead of going out of the gate turn right up the hill. It is a long, winding, rough slope, more or less muddy except in the driest of weather. When I am out of condition I can be close to puking before I am half way up. Today I reach the top tolerably short of a full-on stroke.
Beyond that second hill and an hour into the run I am feeling pretty good and really pushing the pace. Fantastic. The rest of the run is just perfect.