Hill Running Barefoot in Oakland

Well, I ventured off the beaten bath of Lake Merritt today and ran through the hilly Lake Merritt neighborhood to the south! The steep hills provided an excellent opportunity to work on strength training and technique. Currently I am running 3-miles with about 7.6 minutes miles. I recently started running almost everyday with a program integrating long runs, fartlek, sprints, and today, my first venture in hill running (at least barefoot) in order to improve my speed. While running uphill is great for building strength, I found that running downhill was especially good for technique and improving cadence. Faster cadence is important in barefoot running, and in order to run downhill you have to decrease resistance by increasing running cadence. After reaching the flatlands, I found that my technique was definitely smoother for the first several hundred yards. I will have to continue with more hill running practice to make the technique learned from running downhill into muscle memory. Oh, another great thing about running off the beaten path was less litter and less goose poop! I'm going to have get over there more often!