Way back on January 31st I ran the Rocky Racoon 100. Being the reasonable person that I am I took a full 9 days off from any running type activities. Then I started up again slowly but things never felt quite right. Within a week or two I knew the problem was my planter fasciitis ligament on the bottom of both my feet. I did my internet research and began doing foot exercises, rolling, stretching and I bought some weird socks. Went ahead with running the rock n roll marathon in DC since I was all set up to do it. Didn't make anything worse or better.
Continued to kinda run but my feet were hurting most of the time I was on them, since I wait tables 40ish hours a week this was not particularly fun. Finally just decided to stop running completely hoping things would get better. Made a doctor's appointment. She was not helpful and told me to try swimming. I didn't like her.
After not running for several weeks at all my feet were feeling a bit better so I would try running then spend the rest of the night thinking what a dumb idea running was. I started seeing a chiropractor on the advice of several other running and exercise types. I think it helped. My feet were not bothering me at work and in 7 weeks worked up to 15 miles a week. Which is way to slow for my liking but an improvement none the less.
I also saw a podiatrist at about the time I was up to 10 miles a week. I had been resistant to see one partly because the regular doctor was so not helpful and didn't seem to indicate a podiatrist would have a good fix. Also for some reason I thought orthotics ment you had to wear weird ugly old people shoes. Turns out that's not the case. I saw the podiatrist and he said that orthotics would solve all my problems and I would be able to run as much as I wanted. This was what I wanted to hear so I handed over $500 since insurance doesn't really seem to cover any of my needs and waited the 3 weeks for them to be made.
I was up to being able to handle 20 miles in a week when I got my orthotics and after a week of wearing them I felt significantly more improved. Last week I made it up to 29 miles and had my first double-digit run of 10 miles a few days ago. The pain is still not all gone but it is very mild and only after pushing it on the running. I still roll my heels out on a metal ball bareing and try to do extra stretching. Things all seem to be heading in the right direction and I'm so glad. Longest injury ever.
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