The agony of de feet

My feet hurt.

Ok, that’s out of the way…

I have these flat-as-crêpes feet which have taught me through my years of dancing, and now running, to be creative in finding ways to deal with them. I have custom-made orthodics (which to be honest help minimally, but help is help), and I have done a fair amount of research into trigger points and self-massage techniques which means that I pretty much don’t go anywhere without a lacrosse ball to “roll against the wall or floor” or one of those little 35mm bouncy balls to roll under my foot. As a dancer I was lucky to have a great support team to help me deal with my aches and pains: I saw my massage therapist once a week and my chiropractor twice a week. It helped some, but a day didn’t go by that I wasn’t in some form of pain, usually lower back and the feet.

Those days are gone and as a runner I am thrilled to say that I am almost never, ever in pain. Sometimes there is a sore muscle or a tight one, but that’s good. I have learned to head-off many of my old problems with more stretching (specifically yoga), and I eat more and rest better than back in the day. There is much debate about stretching being beneficial or not, and many great studies on the subject, so I’m just speaking from personal experience: nearly every single injury I have ever sustained (with the exception of falling-type injuries) have been born from over-tight muscles pulling on tendons and ligaments which in turn either snapped, became inflamed, pulled something “out” (like my ab muscles vs. my back) or an icky combination of the above. I am extremely flexible, but am very tightly wound.

This is why my feet hurt.

Last October as I approached the 20K race I was to run (was to run because a respiratory infection and strep throat kept me from actually running the race), my feet started to really ache. I am very careful about keeping track of my shoe mileage and rotating my shoes, and was surprised when they were already hurting from the moment I woke up. They felt sort of tired, like they had already been on the run I was waking to go on. I also begin having a problem with my right foot at this time. A nagging soreish pain both on the inside and outside of my first metatarsal joint (big toe). Terrified it was a stress fracture I performed all the self-tests – pinching, prodding- which in the event of a stress fracture would have had me howling in pain or jumping off the chair, and I could safely asses it was not a SFX. I reluctetnly saw my GP, telling her what I thought it was – overly-tight muscles pulling on ligament which is causing the pain, she pretty much agreed. End of story.

After battling the evil infection that kept me from running my race in October I realized with delight that my foot/toe hardly hurt (because over a two-week period I had hardly gotten  out the door for a run!). Flipping through my exercise journal I also noticed that during the month prior to the foot pain exacerbating I had pretty much not done any yoga at all. Humm.

So here’s my dilemma. My toe (well, around the joint) pretty much hurts all the time. I don’t think about it much. If I put the 13K Guppy in the hiking backpack to do our shopping (which I do a lot) I think about it a little. After as little as a 10-minute Sun Salutation session it feels GREAT, as in no symptoms, and then sneaks back a little later. I know it’s muscle-tension related, I think I know which muscles are implicated, but I can’t make permanent progress (without  *not* running).

I also think the perpetual tired feeling in my feet is related. They feel so much better just after a nice yoga practice, even brief.

It may be time for foot ice-baths again for while…