My most lingering running injury, a year later

Photo courtesy of Wholefoot.com

About a year ago, during a 5K race on a cold January morning, I injured both of my Achilles tendons. I managed to finish the race, but it was a subpar time for me, mostly because I had run the 1 mile race just 30 minutes earlier. (It was a double race.) I'm guessing that the cold and fast pace combined to push things over the edge.

At first, I didn't realize I was injured. I thought it was just the kind of DOMS you sometimes get after a hard workout. Unlike the DOMS soreness, however, this didn't go recede the next day. When we went out to brunch with friends, I found that I was limping.

That evening, I discovered that spending a lot of time rubbing at the painful tender spots helped to a degree, but that there were still two spots - one on each ankle - that hurt just to touch.

Like the stereotypical runner, I went ahead with self-diagnosis and treatment. It wasn't too hard to figure out that I had some form of Achilles tendinitis, and that eccentric stretching/calf raises are a commonly recommended course of physical therapy.

In looking over my running log from last year, I see that did not run at all for six days, and then I went for a 5+ mile run on the treadmill.* Apparently that was not a good idea, because I did not run again for five days.

* This was the run when I learned for certain that I do not heel strike, because for the first half mile or so, the Achilles tendons were pretty rigid, forcing me to heel strike - and it felt quite weird.

After that, my Achilles tendons were still sore, but not while running, so I went ahead and resumed something vaguely normal, although it was more than three weeks since the initial injury before I got up to 9 miles, and 10+ miles wouldn't come until late February.

Not surprisingly, total mileage for January and February were well below my usual monthly totals, and it wasn't until April that I got back to the 150 mile mark.

In retrospect, I would have had a faster recovery if I had taken more time off from running, rather than resuming when I was able to. I don't think I aggravated my injuries, but it's highly likely that I slowed the healing process. In fact, while I was able to run several races from March onward, I didn't feel completely pain-free until halfway through the year. Until then, even if the tendons didn't bother me, I could easily pinpoint the injured spots by squeezing.

I would like to think that the next time something like this happens, I will accept a longer period of non-running in exchange for a faster recovery. Now that I have my own rowing machine, perhaps that will be easier to do. For now, though, I am reveling in feeling 100 percent and hoping to set some PRs this year!

Weird foot injuries that don't affect running

I seem to have tweaked my foot during last week's bowling session, which is a big "d'oh" in that it's not even like I got injured while running. It's not a noticeable pain unless I happen to bend my right foot sharply, in which case I feel discomfort in the top of the ankle joint where the foot meets the lower leg.

The weird thing is that this hasn't affected my running at all, and in fact, since that bowling session, I've run 32 miles, including a really good tempo run (indeed, faster than tempo pace) and a hard set of 1/2 mile repetitions. Maybe I should get weird, minor injuries while bowling more frequently?

Why didn't I treat that corn on my foot earlier?!?

I recently developed a corn on the outside edge of the bottom of my right foot. It actually took me a while to research (i.e., Google) what it might be that was bothering me, as I was hoping it would just go away by itself. Although it was on the bottom of my foot, I have high enough arches that it wasn't directly pressing down even during running, so pain was minimal unless I went and pressed it.

Eventually, though, I wanted to reassure myself that it wasn't a cancerous tumor or anything, so I went a-Googling. I don't remember the exact search term I used, but it was something like "painful callus bottom of foot." That quickly pointed me toward a potential diagnosis of a corn:

Corns generally occur on the tops and sides of the toes. A hard corn is a small patch of thickened, dead skin with a packed center. A soft corn has a much thinner surface and usually occurs between the 4th and 5th toes. A seed corn is a tiny, discrete callous that can be very tender if it's on a weight-bearing part of the foot. Seed corns tend to occur on the bottom of the feet, and some doctors believe this condition is caused by plugged sweat ducts.

That perfectly described what was bothering me! Further "research" provided me with suggested home remedies. After a couple of days, I went out and bought salicylic acid and corn cushions (donut-shaped adhesive pads that relieve the pressure on the corn). The salicylic acid is supposed to break down the proteins in the dead skin that makes up the corn.

The cushion definitely helped at first. The salicylic acid turned the outer layer of the corn a pasty white. I kept up with this treatment for three days. By then, the original corn cushion was getting a bit flat and hence losing some of its effectiveness.

This morning, I found a pumice stone and went to work on the corn. After soaking my foot in warm water, I rubbed gently at the corn until an outer layer of dead skin was worn down. I didn't want to irritate my foot, so I stopped there.

By dinner time, the improvement was dramatic. Mind you, I had gone for a 7-mile threshold run (5 miles at half marathon pace) in the late morning, so it's not like I had been babying my foot. Yet, I'd say that the corn is about 80% gone already.

Why didn't I treat this earlier???