The Saga of the Wounded Foot: An Update

This time last week I was just beginning to hobble around my office, keenly aware of the pain in my left foot. It had started late Tuesday night, as a weird kind of twinge in the arch of the foot, going back to the heel but also running up to just beside the knob of my ankle. I spent that day and the next two limping while at work, and when at home doing things like wrapping the afflicted area in a bandage, dunking it in ice, and keeping it elevated.

Needless to say, this put a crimp in my training regimen. In fact I haven’t run or lifted weights at all since Sunday the 12th. I’ve tried to keep even more strictly to the diet system, and have gone swimming several times (though, because of the Jewish holidays, my swimming place, the Jewish Community Center, has been closed the last two days). Even so, it’s been a big disappointment to get out of the swing of things, training-wise, after what felt like a pretty smooth path to getting into a routine. I haven’t even wanted to blog about any of this until just recently, when I got some good news re: the troublesome foot.

The good news is that it’s likely not even a sprain, which I figured had to be the best-case scenario, based on the pain and discomfort and persistence of this injury, but something like tendonitis. (This is according to a doctor. I at first thought I’d heard him wrong—isn’t tendonitis, like, tennis elbow and these other repetitive-motion injuries, accomplished after a long period of time spent doing something?—but several people I’ve mentioned it to have said that no, this is right, that part of tendonitis is the tendency for the injury to come back: in this case, for the muscle in my arch to become inflamed again.) I’m on an ibuprofen regimen to reduce the swelling, and apparently once that’s finished, provided my foot feels OK, I should be able to run not long thereafter.

I have no doubt that the injury was caused by my running shoe situation, which I’ve mentioned in passing here but not really dove into. Basically, I have weird feet, and have a lot of trouble finding shoes that don’t hurt my feet. I compound this problem by repeatedly failing—usually for reasons of money or pure laziness—to go to a running store staffed with expert runners and instead going to places like Dick’s or DSW, thinking I’ve cracked the case of the problem feet by, say, buying an extra wide pair. In this case, the problem was that, feeling that my right foot was not getting enough support, I added a pair of gel insoles to give better support. Without thinking at all about it, I added the insoles to both shoes, even though the left foot was pretty much fine, support-wise. So I think the result was that the left foot was now getting too much support. So much that it was like I was punching the arch every time I planted that foot.

So, that’s my story. There hasn’t been too much to blog about, clearly, but also it’s been somewhat sad and weird to not lift weights, to not get up early and go running, to have these weird empty places in my schedule. I’m hoping that, with the help of swimming and the resumption (starting Thursday) of some weight work, I can get back into the routine without having lost too much of these kinds of muscle-memory habits I’ve been developing over the last 4 or 6 weeks. I think it should be just a blip in my training—as I said to Rich, it’s sort of lucky that this came at this time, because even if it were a sprain (as I initially thought) the recovery should leave enough time to do the full 16-18 week marathon training program—and at the least it will prod me to finally visit one of these running specialty stores and get a decent pair of shoes.

Tags: Adam Reger, injury, running, shoes, training