Introducing... Hotasphaltblisteredsoles

Introducing... hotasphaltblisteredsoles. Here is my introduction, a longer one, but relevant to these forums.

I joined the forum a couple of days ago in order to respond to a couple of relevant posts in Bare It/Barefoot.

Generally, I just wear T-shirt and jeans on a casual basis, only flip flops when going out when required to wear shoes, otherwise I am in bare feet. As a frequent barefooter—even when I can go barefoot after work, I often find myself going barefoot during or a couple of hours after the hottest afternoon hours during spring and especially in hot sumer. For the hottest summer afternoon hours, I end up having to keep increasing the length of standing heat the soles have to endure and the distance walking the soles have to endure before needing to cool off too much burning because much of my barefooting is on hot asphalt in inland valleys (but not desert areas yet).

Despite having lower arches and a thinner ball of the foot behind the toes, my soles have done very well. If I will be doing an extra long and extra hot walk, especially with more frequent standing during the walk, I learned from experience that I should still bring flip flops with me in a carrying bag as an alternative to overburning the soles.

The worst possible burned soles that were not overburned, for me, ended up stinging for half a day, with blackened asphalt dirt baked into the soles that lasts two days with no additional barefooting, soles reddened all the way into the next afternoon, and that makes walking is a bit more delicate from all the burning that same day—if I burned the soles up to the start of a stronger tingling instead of just a prickling feeling very frequently that afternoon. Except for mentioning that, I don't care if they burn because the heat tolerance has already increased by the later afternoon. After that is blisters, and thankfully at most they have only been the size of a US quarter in a couple of spots instead of an entire section such as the whole ball of the foot. One "that was stupid" barefooting event a few years ago that gave me blisters in less than three minutes was walking a blacktop asphalt flea market in 105 degrees F weather, just one hour before the hottest afternoon hours: hotfooting across a gravel asphalt parking lot before entering... not bringing flip flops at all for when there was too little shade that was also cool enough shade... stopping in too hot shade four times I had to resume walking again when the heat got too much standing in the shade... then having to leave and hotfoot back across the parking lot before blisters started to fill up. That's why I chose my username as hotasphaltblisteredsoles: I've walked on hot asphalt frequently (actually my favorite surface to walk on!), but sometimes overburned the soles to blisters even if the result when they healed was much more heat tolerance.

Let me also offer some tips for hot surface barefooters, from own my experience, even if others already know these:

• A sharp prickly burning of the soles can become painful, but at most only causes a lasting stinging burn and some longer lasting redness when the soles burned more frequently during the same barefoot day.
• Prickly burning increasing to tingling means the soles are not equalizing to the burning fast enough and need some cooldown before the tingling increases too much.
• If the tingling becomes way too strong like the soles are being electric shocked, and it a quick pinching feeling followed by a watery feeling on the soles, then that's blisters even if the white areas don't show up right away and even if they don't fill up shortly after the white areas appeared.

Avoid burning past prickling and the soles will almost never be overburned; however, some amount of toughening by progressive burning is needed for barefooters that will walk on hot surfaces more than occasionally.