A little cross posting magic

Well now, it sure appears we've neglected our little bits of fluff in favor of our own blogs. Until we decide to either close down our own posts or until we decide how we're going to use our fluff, I'll do a little cross posting.

So, for a while now, I've been experiencing periodic foot pain when I run. It's been going on for years. When it first started happening, I was doing my running around the indoor track at Bally's on Duke St. The feeling was more of a tightness of the shoes and the toes going numb. I'd loosen the shoes and that would help. Then, I got fitted in the right pair of shoes at Fleet Feet or Metro Walk and Run in Springfield and that took care of it for several years.

Then I started training for Ironman in 2005/2006. My feet and my shoes served me well until then end of 2005 when my feet started to bother me after about 90 minutes of running. I talked to Ray Pugsly (co-owner of =PRR=) about my foot problems. He suggested that my middle toes might be a little lower than the rest and suggested putting a quarter sized cut-out mole skin under the offending area of my forefoot. This alleviated the pain/soreness until the shoe had nearly reached its total mileage. For the rest of my shoes, sometimes I would use this solution and sometimes I would just put up with the discomfort.

The pain never got bad enough that I would have to stop a training run, until last winter, when I had one such run. The pain got bad enough in a few half-iron distance races that I would need to stop and alternate between running and walking. The first race was Eagleman in 2006. The full iron distance races that I had to walk/run in was more about fatigue than any extreme soreness, though it was definitely sore for all three races. And, I've never had to DNF because of the foot.

I finally decided to see the doctor about my foot, thinking that I would probably need orthotics for my shoes. I had to get x-rays and a referral to see the physical therapist (Team Z vet Kerri Kramer) that I wanted to see to get my potential orthotics made. My doctor thought that the best that I could do was get an injection (presumably a cortisone injection) from a podiatrist that would provide from short-term relief to several years relief, depending on how my body reacted to it. She admitted she didn't know enough about the foot to know if there was really anything else that could be done, and stuck to the line that seeing a podiatrist would be best.

I stuck with going to Kerri. As it turns out, I made a good decision. The foot is generally divided into a front half and a back half. The back half of my foot is tracking within normal measurements, but the front half of my foot is off significantly, pulling my big toe up off the ground. So, when I walk or run, I am not getting much, if any propulsion off of the inside of my foot or big toe. It also makes me a late stage pronator and causes the calluses and blisters on the very inside of my big toe as my foot whips around. After really looking at my feet and finding this discrepancy, it really made sense to Kerri why I was feeling such discomfort in the fore foot behind my 3rd and 4th toe.

As a result, I am now not allowed to do high impact activities for the next 2 weeks. That means lots of elliptical, swimming, and biking. It also means no marathon in February, which I had already decided against. When I'm allowed to start running again, it's going to be of the treadmill/elliptical variety until my orthotics are fully broken in and Kerri gives me the green light to resume my training for Ironman USA and Beach2Battleship 140.6.

Support my fund raising efforts for National Rehabilitation Hospital

If that link doesn't work copy and paste:
http://januscharitychallenge.kintera.org/lp09/nationalrehabhospital