When I say it out loud now, walking miles around Boston carrying a backpack and wearing flimsy sandals sounds like a horrible idea. And yet, it is exactly what I let myself do last weekend. When my foot was sore the next day, I figured it would be better the next day. When it was still sore the next day, I figured I should look it up online.
Type “heel pain” into Google and any runner can tell you what will pop up. I have been fortunate enough to be injury free so far so I didn’t realize what the results would be. “Plantar fasciitis.” I knew it was something runners get but I didn’t think I would actually get it. Everything I read about convinced me that this was my problem. Luckily it was a mild case, but I still wanted to get ahead of it before it got any worse!
I took ibuprofen to reduce inflammation and pain, iced a little, and massaged a little. I also put those horrible sandals away for good. I saw that there were supports you could buy but I was too cheap to spend any money if it was still this minor.
My mom is a nurse practitioner so usually our complaints are met with an eye roll and “hypochondriac” muttered at us. This time when I told her that I thought I had plantar fasciitis, she said “sounds about right.” Comforting… “I think I have something for it!” Hooray! She went to a medical conference last year and got free samples of everything you could imagine. One of those was for plantar fasciitis and she still had it stashed away!
She gave me this plantar fasciitis sleeve (but size small). I put it on and it felt amazing. It has different zones of compression and put pressure right at the spot where my heel meets my arch (exactly the spot I wanted pressure). I wore it the rest of that day, the next day, and one more day after that. I tried wearing it at night once but I don’t think you are supposed to do that because it got pretty uncomfortable. Before you know it I was all heeled up! (Ok, that was a bad pun. Let me try that again… I was all healed up.)
This minor incidence didn’t affect my running at all but it is a good reminder to pay attention to how I treat my precious feet and running body. I will try to wear more supportive shoes, especially when I will be walking a lot. This is also a reminder to step up my stretching to ward off any other potential injuries! Because as easy as it may be to plop down on the couch after a long run, I don’t want to end up writing another one of these about how I should have known to stretch after going on a long run.
To a 5k and beyond! 