I think Spring is officially here in the mountains of NC. It's currently 78 degrees Fahrenheit and I took full advantage of the first truly warm day of the year. I decided that today was the day to rotate my Invisible Shoe Huaraches back into service. After a longer and colder than normal winter of running in shoes, I have been itching to get back the weather that allows my toes to soak in some much needed vitamin D.

I have been taking it slow to transition back into barefoot running after a rough ending to last year. As I have stated before, I had an "injury of ignorance" when I pushed things too hard, too far, and too fast in my first season as a barefoot runner. I vowed in my 4 weeks of pain and sloth that I would not quit barefoot running and that I would return in 2011 stronger and smarter. I bought some shoes for the winter (Saucony Kinvara & Brooks Mach 11) and took my sweet time recovering and working down from the padded ride of the Kinvaras to the rather stiff and hard ride of the Mach 11's. I also decided after a very busy day on Christmas Eve hosting In-Laws and running around the house barefoot with little or no time to sit that I could work the huaraches into my everyday wear standing at work. This has done wonders for my foot strength after 3 1/2 months of 40+ hours a week of pure standing (not counting the fact that I don't wear shoes inside my house). So a few weeks ago when warm (above 40 degrees Fahrenheit) weather started, I dusted off the aquasox and felt the beauty of barefoot-like running again. I was comfortable in the aquasox and they were a great transition down from the Mach 11's but I missed the feeling of the huaraches......until today. Now I'm inspired to intelligently increase my distance and frequency so that hopefully I can do 90-95% of my runs in them until it gets cold again.

What will I run in the other 5-10% of the time you may wonder? My new Merrell Trail Gloves. I have worn them mostly as casual shoes to work, on errands, and to run around the back yard with the kids. I have about 5 miles of decent running on them at the present date and have found them nothing but pleasurable. I want to put at least 10 times that on them before I give them a proper review. As a bit of background, I bought the shoes predominately as a good minimal shoe to wear everyday that I could also run in. At this point I absolutely love them, but need more time to be objective.

Watch for more Merrell updates because the full review will most likely be weeks from now. There's no way I'm taking my huaraches off just to run in the Merrells and write another glowing review (which seems imminent).

Happy running everybody!! Spring is here!!