Better late than never. Last Wednesday saw me take on my first imperial distance race (we only do metric distances in South Africa): The Forest Five (mile) at The Look Out in Bracknell and what a fantastic evening and offroad race it was.

Following the test run I did on the Monday, I had intended on running in my huaraches, but then common sense prevailed and I opted to run in my Vibrams instead. I decided not to run in the huaraches as I've not done much running in them yet and the last thing I wanted were blisters from the different style of footwear, especially likely as I'm not too sure I've got them properly adjusted yet.

My wife very generously offered to drive me to the race and we arrived with about half an hour to spare. As I pre-registered online I already had my number so had plenty time to locate the race start - it's a little walk into the forest - and warm up. It was a very pleasant evening, so getting warm wasn't a problem.

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Following on from my first 10k road race in over 11 years, I've gone ahead and registered for my first offroad race in just as many years. Tomorrow I will be running the Forest Five. It's "5 miles along forest tracks of grass and gravel through the scenic Windsor Forest". Sounds good, but can I run it barefoot?

Not being one to be beaten by a bit of dirt, I headed out yesterday for a very gentle barefoot run over the course, or at least what I think is the course - with the aid of my Garmin Forerunner 405CX I followed this route - to see if I can actually run it barefoot. If I could, I'd run the race barefoot too, but until I'd covered the whole route, I couldn't be sure.

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