Fresh inspiration

The last few weeks have been a little slack on the running front - preparing for the builders arriving at home, work getting hectic and a holiday away with friends haven't helped my training. Excuses, excuses I know, it's something I need to re-learn in terms of prioritising those things that are important.
One advantage of the holiday in particular was the opportunity to relax and read - not a common occurence with the kids running around at home. My brother gave me a book for my birthday called Born to Run by Chris McDougall, which I devoured whilst away. Inspirational. A truly brilliant read. I'll not go into the details here as that's what Google was built for, but it's re-kindled my desire to run ultra-distance events, and has sparked an interest in moving towards "barefoot running" - not sure I'm prepared to go the whole hog just yet, but the principle is that we have evolved with an almost perfectly engineered foot for running long distances and modern running shoes simply interfere with our bio-mechanics and leads to a greater risk of injury. Given injury is something I'm keen to avoid I've decided to give it a go and will see how we get on.
That said, the book is also inspirational in terms of nutrition and body fuelling, and yet I'm sat here with a beer next to my keyboard. Small steps. Or is it selective rationalisation? Less money spent on running shoes = more money for beer!