Avoiding Long Distance Blisters When Transitioning to Moc3s for the Winter

I have semi-committed to running my first ever 13.1 mile race on May 18, 2013.  I want to do it in bare feet.  I haven’t even run an official 10K run barefooted yet.  This last summer, the two I signed up for ended up being on very rough roads.  The Great Potato 13.1 miler (registration opens in January), however, is basically on greenbelt paths and either flat or downhill.  My husband has run it, but in shoes.  He thinks it is a good course for me to try.  I find myself somewhere between happy anticipation and panic when I think about it.

I have recently upped my single run mileage to 10.5 miles.  I’m sure I haven’t run this far at once since early college days, 31 years ago.   I’m pretty sure that back then I did it very slowly and only a couple of times.  I want to be able to run 15 miles before this coming race, so that I will be comfortable with the distance.  Judging from how I feel every time I increase my mileage, I need that buffer zone both mentally and physically.

Part of the challenge is that, though I have been running 8 miles barefoot for the last couple of months (9.5 miles once last week), I now need to mostly run in my Moc3 running moccasins due to winter temperatures.  I have decided that I need to wear socks with them for now.  Even though I have run between 8 and 9 miles a couple of times in this foot-covering combo over the summer, going over that mileage in my Moc3’s this last week needed my extra attention.  This is not all bad, though, because it keeps me working on running lightly.  It is, however, a strange circular sequence of cause and effect:

• I try to run lightly, relaxed in the hips and elastic in the legs
• This makes me run a bit faster than I might otherwise, simply as a matter of the cadence that naturally occurs
• Now, I get tired, but mostly in my legs because they are not used to the pace, especially for that distance
• I notice that as I tire, I begin to feel my feet slide a bit inside my Moc3’s
• Some spots on my feet seem to sense the heat of friction, particularly after mile 8
• I think about relaxing and running lightly…

1. I didn’t want to break my run up, because I needed to know what it felt like to run that whole time, and
2. I thought my toes might be too sensitive by then.

When I was home, was glad to find only one slightly sore spot on a toe, which might have been started from my longest-barefoot-run-ever (the 9.5 miles I mentioned above) a few days previously.  But no blisters.  I am still able to wander around the house barefooted without any discomfort for that toe.  I wonder if you can even see the spot in the photo below?

The most recent 10.3 mile run took me 1.5 hours.  That is basically an 8:50 minutes per mile average.  I would just as soon run the 13. 1 miles at a little faster pace, so if avoiding blisters helps me keep up my pace, I accept.