Could she be right?

I met my physiotherapist last night. She rocks!

She did a full assessment. She believes that I don't have a stress fracture! Hooray! She thinks my core muscles (glutes, piriformis, back etc.) are weak and not firing properly. I actually felt this in my abdomen. Thus it's putting pressure on my sciatic nerve and increasing the load for all the muscles below them (ankles, feet, knees). Running in the snow makes it worse, because my ankles and feet have to work extra hard to keep me balanced.

She thinks that this is why my foot hurts and it's why I keep getting recurring issues such as achilles tendonitis or plantar fasciitis. And, I believe her. I've known for awhile that I needed to work on my core, but I had no idea it was this bad. I pretty much sucked at all the stuff she did in the assessment, with my left side being worse than the right. Last night was like an epiphany!

The cure? Acupuncture and lots of strengthening exercises.

The best news of all? I should be able to start running in 2-3 weeks. She said I should be back to my old mileage quickly and that I should be able to run the half marathon in May.

Yippee!

Much better

All the rest, ice, stretching and massage is starting to pay dividends. And my fashion transgressions at the office have been overlooked. My calves feel much better and my left heel and foot are feeling tons better.

I've been stretching my legs 3x a day and before I get out of bed in the morning. I've been wearing a pair of running shoes instead of heels or flats. I've been icing my feet as much as I can. I cut back my mileage intensity, frequency, and distance.

I really hope I caught this early enough that it will continue to improve. I'm dying to break 30:00 in the 5K in a few weeks' time. I've felt good enough to throw in some RPE pick-ups in one run (real perceived effort) and it seems to have made a difference in my run today. My pace was a good 20 seconds faster than my last few runs. I felt so good, both during and after my runs.

It feels good to be back on track.

Ouch!

The pain in my heels is not going away.

I've done lots of reading on the handy interwebs and I think the problem has to do with my calves (no, not cows!). My calves and achilles tendons have always been my weak point—no pun intended—so any strain on them means that other problems will likely follow. Anytime I go for a sports massage, the RMT tells me that I have tight calves. I stretch them as much as I can, but nothing really seems to help to prevent the build-up of tension.

I've scheduled a massage for Monday and reduced my mileage from 19K this week to 11K. I'm stretching my calves and heels at least three times a day, icing it as often as I can and taking anti-inflammatories. I am going to head out shortly to pick up a massage stick to help as well.

Hopefully this one week of setbacks will help to prevent a long-term injury