Friday Friday Friday!  I’m so excited!  What’s everyone’s plan for the weekend?  I’m off to the races at Newmarket tomorrow which will be fab, although I’m hoping the weather improves … it’s been horrific this week!  It’ll be lovely though anyway, my friend Romy lives up in Newmarket which is perfect because we can check out her renovations to her place, have lunch and then potter over to the races.

As I mentioned, I went to a seminar at Profeet about foot care on Wednesday.  It was free for anyone doing one of the Threshold Series races and lucky for me, Profeet is right round the corner from my house!  It was like it was meant to be … I’m so pleased I went because it was fantastic, but I feel like now I know too much about what’s in my future haha.

I got there a little early and there was free food and drink (do these people know runners or what) and then the seminar started.  It mainly focused on blisters, giving the details of how they form, why they form and – most importantly – how to avoid them.  The seminar was given by a podiatrist specialising in running, so he really knew his stuff.  He covered prepping your feet in advance by toughening them up with things like surgical spirit and moisturiser (’cause you don’t want those babies to be too tough or they won’t have any elasticity which makes the risk of blisters even worse).  He dealt with avoidance techniques on the race itself (such as keeping your feet dry, shoe sizes, shoe fit, using talc etc), and he also covered how to deal with the various types of blister if they come up during an event, how to tape your feet in various areas and the various types of tape that can be used.

My best take-away tips were to use surgical spirit to toughen up your feet in advance (with moisturiser, as above!), to practice taping my feet in advance and running with tape on to check that the tape-type and technique don’t cause any blisters in themselves (for example on the adjacent toe).  I’m not actually prone to blisters (I didn’t get any on the Atlantic Coast Challenge at all as far as I remember) but it’s one of my biggest worries for WRU because of all the sand … one of my friends did Marathon des Sables this year and he posted a picture of his feet afterwards.  I swear it was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen (my poor unsuspecting eyes may never recover) and I definitely do not want to get blisters on the first couple days – or any day, but especially to start with – and have them festering away for the rest of the race.  So from about July I’ll be toughening my little hooves up like a boss.

Any blister tips are gratefully received!  Let me know what works …

xx