Ultrarunning
These 6 tips will make you a barefoot running expert
Adventurer Anna McNuff has run the equivalent of 90 marathons across the British Isles without shoes. Here she reveals what she's learned from this gruelling challenge.
Over the course of five months, global adventurer Anna McNuff has run the distance of 90 marathons (2,352 miles) completely barefoot across the British Isles. The 34-year-old began her Barefoot Britain journey on June 2, 2019, in the Shetland Islands and finished in London on November 17, 2019, battling razor-blade coastlines, mucky farmland and pebble beaches along the way.
McNuff, who is an ambassador for Girl Guiding UK, chose this challenge in a bid to inspire young women to reach for goals that they may believe lie beyond their capabilities.
Anna's bag 'Barry Buttercup' was signed along the way by her hosts
© Anna McNuff
Spending 168 days on the road, Anna conquered parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the South Coast (check out her route map here).
From sleeping 10 hours a night to embracing the dirt between her toes, here's six key things Anna learned from her epic journey.
1. Preparation is key
Anna trained for 18 months in the lead-up to the challenge
© Anna McNuff
Working with Christian Poole, founder of The Running Lab, Anna trained for 18 months in preparation for the challenge in order to alter her running style to accommodate being barefoot. Whereas trainers absorb the impact of the feet, allowing for a rougher landing, barefoot running puts more pressure on the knee and hip joints. Therefore, Christian provided Anna with specially designed exercises that would control her bounce and spread her toes – all while landing softly on her forefeet.
"He taught me to run like a swan, as they glide forwards and then underneath is where all the work is going on," she says. "The up and down movement is minimised and I’m almost gliding forward with quick cadence."
Having run in minimalist trainers for the past three years, Anna's feet were already used to running with little support. However, in order to toughen up her feet, during training Anna would switch between running in rubber socks and being barefoot, gradually upping her mileage barefoot every week. For practice, she ran the London Marathon (26.2 miles/42.16km) in April of this year without so much as a sock in sight.
Since the training, Anna has noticed significant changes in her body, from the skin on the balls of her feet becoming 3mm thicker to the space between her toes widening: "As soon as I started doing more minimalist running it was almost as if someone had taken a syringe and sucked any excess out of my calves. They got really tight because every muscle was being used all the time."
I second guess myself because I don’t know if pushing on is going to destroy me or make me sick or break my body
2. Embrace the grime
The thought of running barefoot, especially through the streets of London, is something of a nightmare for most people, but for Anna it's a chance to release her inner wild side.
"Whenever I did a run across London my feet would be disgusting at the end, but in a sick way I kind of enjoyed it because I was feeling my home city," reveals Anna. "I’ve got the dirt of London on my feet. I felt as if I was experiencing my environment. I think you give yourself permission to be free and care less that translates to every other area of your life.”
Aside from getting her big toe caught in an area of deep bog by the coast and stepping in sheep droppings, fortunately Anna didn't experience any major injuries or infections to her feet.
3. Listen to your body
Anna burned up to 3,000 calories a day
© Anthony Behrens
Averaging about 20 miles a day, Anna learned that she needs to listen to her body if she wanted to complete the challenge, allowing herself a day off if she was too exhausted to run:
"I second guess myself because I don’t know if pushing on is going to destroy me and make me sick or break my body. Or, if I can just go on a little bit more, so its constantly a fine line.”
Burning 3,000 calories a day and running up to a week at a time with no breaks, Anna slept 10 hours a night to let her body recover. With no sport therapist or team to help her, if Anna did feel sore, she had to self-treat herself by pushing hard on the area of muscle that’s painful and then release the pressure and, of course, lots of plasters and tape.
4. There are many different types of terrain
The skin on Anna's feet is now thicker and the space between toes wider
© Anna McNuff
Hobbling over gravel one mile to flying through mossy forests the next, Anna encountered a rollercoaster of different terrains during her journey. Depending on the surface, each marathon took Anna roughly six hours to complete, or four hours if she was lucky enough to find smooth tarmac or flat grassland like the Yorkshire Dales to run on.
"I’ve learnt that Great Britain has thousands of different surfaces that we move over every day and we never pay any attention to until you’re on your bare feet," she enthuses. I’m such a tarmac geek now!"
Having completed the London marathon barefoot, Anna first thought that running on tarmac wasn’t going to be much of a problem. However, due to the ice in the north, stone chips are placed on the tarmac to make it spiky for the car tyres to grip onto. So for Anna the start of her journey in the Scottish Shetlands was like running on a bed of nails (ouch!).
"People always ask me what happens when you step on a piece of glass or are concerned with the big things," says the explorer. "But the most difficult thing is getting splinters or tiny pieces of grit because they start to get infected.”
It felt like someone had taken a syringe and sucked any excess out of my calves, because every muscle was being used constantly
5. Anna says 'relax'
Jump if you love running barefoot!
© Anna McNuff
Often feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge, Anna learnt that she had to focus on one day at a time and relax her expectations.
"There was a chance of failure, but that’s the reason I picked this challenge. There was no reassurance that I would make it to the finish line. Who knew what would happen along the way? That's the adventure. That's the unknown."
"It’s about maintaining a state of calm when everything around you is going crazy, but you’re staying very centred and focused," adds Anna. "You just keep moving forwards, no matter what's going on around you. I’ve just got to say, 'Come on universe, do your worst because I’m just going to keep running'.”
6. The strength of the human spirit
One of the biggest things Anna took away from the challenge was the huge amount of support and kindness she received from the public: "My followers on social media are just amazing. I get so many messages from people saying I went out for my run today and I had a really tough time, but then I thought if you can run barefoot then I can complete this 5K. So, feeling like its bigger than just me made me want to keep going. It’s the strength of the human spirit and showing what we can go through."
What also motivated Anna was speaking to the Girl Guides along the way and hearing all the challenges they want to undertake. "Girl Guiding has changed so much. They're creating feminists of the future. They do self-care, campaigning, storytelling, bush crafts. They're creating little Lara Crofts. I don’t want to let them down.”
