Wednesday, September 1, 2010 (60 minutes)

I jogged from Alpine to Lacy this morning and started on some barefoot laps there. After about ten minutes, I got a sharp localized pain on the bottom of the second toe of my left foot. I checked to see if it was a barb or a bee sting, but I didn't see anything, so I kept running. After a minute it was still hurting, so I checked again and this time found a little pink patch that looked like it had been bitten by an insect in an obscure nook on that toe.

I was already worried about being stung by bees on the south field, since I've been stung there running barefoot many times before. I guess this wasn't a bee sting, but it was still severe enough that I didn't want to run barefoot any more. I finished the run in shoes, running for just over an hour with a couple of short breaks for the restroom, changing shoes, and examining my foot.

I felt okay. I would prefer to run in the evening when it gets cool around 6:30 PM, but I just took a part time job at a tutoring center that keeps me working at that hour during the week.

My options are to get up early and run or to run when it's hot. I'm not sure which I dislike more - the heat or getting up early. Getting up early would also let me run with the cross country team, but I'm not sure whether I want to do that just now, either, since I don't want to run workouts until I've done a solid, 400-minute training week without feeling strained, and I want to stay off sidewalks (the route from Alpine to Lacy can be done with at least half grass-on-the-side-of-the-road running, which I'm running in lieu of biking to the destination, since it saves time and I'm just jogging then anyway, but I might consider switching to always biking to grass in the future.)