Michael: Puzzles

With a lively step,
The cows pranced by our front door
And into the field.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Last Saturday we ran a race and I felt remarkably good. I used a shoe, the Salomon Sense Ultras, that I hadn’t raced in and barely worn the last two years. I brought them here to use as road speed work shoes, but quickly decided they weren’t very well suited for that purpose, so back into the  shoe dungeon they went.

The puzzle to me isn’t why I used them during this last race, I didn’t feel I had much of a choice. If my Kinvara T.R.s weren’t beaten to death, I’d have used those.

 But the Salomons worked great. So why did I abandon using them for so long?

The last race I remember running in them was two years ago at the Mt. Baldy Challenge. They worked great and I ran a good race. But shortly after that I started developing heel pain. Initially, I thought it was the shoes, so whatever trainers or racers I was using, were replaced. I’d get some short term relief, but then the pain would return.

During the next year and a half I went through several self-diagnoses concluding that it was either age related (heel pad being worn down), possibly a bone spur, or perhaps bursitis. Maybe some deadly witches brew of all three. Regardless, the pain was persistent and ranged from annoying to intense enough to have me questioning how much longer I would continue running.

Given what I could glean from the net, there wasn’t going to be an easy fix to any of these possible problems, so I thought I’d try to self treat before seeing a doctor. The first step I took was to go to a more cushioned shoe, the Hokas. These did seem to keep the pain at bay for longer than other shoes, but not for more than a couple of runs.

Next up was stretching. I bought a Knotty Tiger acorn to massage my plantar fasciitis, a foam roller for my I.T. band, hamstrings, and hip flexors, and started using a massage stick on my calves and quads. I also went back to doing the Achilles stretches my Sports Medicine physician had prescribed for me about 4 years ago but I thought, or out of laziness, I could abandon since my Achilles tendonitis had largely subsided. I also started experimenting with different sole inserts.

I can’t be sure what worked or even what the specific problem ever was, but about 6 months ago I went on a 13 mile trail run and was pain free. I thought it was a fluke so I approached my next several runs with that keep your fingers crossed, don’t get happy too soon, anxiety that the pain would return and I’d have to go the expensive, possibly laborious, and likely fruitless physician route. But for over 6 months now I’ve been running in various shoes over differing terrain for some very long runs (except on pavement - those I still keep short) without any heel pain.

And that is the curious story of how a man used a shoe, abandoned it for two years, but eventually was happily reunited.