Plantar Fascia Issues-a new plan

[GinnySellars]

The plot thickens....

Physio Tamara Dantzer is helping me figure out this continuing saga of heel pain. It's odd, because it hurts when I'm sitting still, and is not particularly aggravated by barefoot running...

It seems that a nerve may be getting stuck in the dura or sheath surrounding it. I can stretch the nerve in a certain position, and it seems to have some effect, though not in the moment.

I still have the very sore 'bruise-like' feeling on the inside of my heel. It doesn't bother me most of the time unless I touch it. I may have some local anesthetic applied under ultrasound guidance (aka cortizone) to get the local soreness down while I continue with the ankle mobilization, nerve stretching, and muscle stimulation. Can you believe it's this complicated? It's been 9 months since I've run more than a short time in barefoot shoes....my message to you is if it's different or hurting, deal with it now. Don't wait a decade until it's a multi-layered problem.

[Marc Nimchuk]

Wow Ginny!  When I said that treating PF in people with rigid arches was difficult, i had no idea I was understating it to this degree!  Good luck with this and keep me posted.

[GinnySellars]

OK, I'm totally stoked!!!

I just did a hike/run in Kal Park with Andrew for 2.5 hrs. I was totally pain free.
I was running in my NB 100s, which look like an off-road racing flat. I can completely feel the terrain. I was running with a super short quick stride, very much forefoot and sometimes mid-foot. Last week the soleus and arch did not handle the forefoot position much. Today with undulating terrain, it was great.

Tamara Dantzer, physio in Vernon, has been helping me weekly. She starts with my hips, because I seem to rock forward on the injured side. She needles some of the calf muscles to help them release, and she does a couple manual manipulations on the foot to help a little bone move back in place in my foot.

My job is to stretch hip flexors that tug the hip, use the TENS machine to teach my arch to work, stretch and roll calves, and to stop my 'secret habit' of sleeping on my tummy with a hand under the left hip. That seems to be what rocks the hip out of place.

I continue this post because it reminds me that it often takes a long time to figure out the solution to a problem, and often takes many different approaches.

The irony is that on my wonderful long run, I twisted my ankle, so I'm writing this with ice on my ankle...

[Tamara Dantzer]

Hey Ginny!
Sorry to hear about your ankle -boo - ...but happy to hear about your great run! yae!
Hey- have you tried stand-up paddling yet??
I tried it last week with 3 others and it was really interesting how after an hour we were all feeling it in different spots- I suspect our individual weak muscular links-
one person's knees, another's shoulder blade, yet another's calf/feet/arches and lastly abs....
anyway was thinking it might be a fun workout combined with a swim for you sometime:)...obviously you are only allowed to paddle long enough to work your feet intrinsics a little and not to exhaustion/failure/flare-up...hmm that darn fine line.
keep up the good work

[GinnySellars]

Wow, I was reading Catriona Morrison's blog. She's a long distance triathlete, and just won Texas 70.3. She tells the story of overcoming achilles tendon pain. Her story could be mine (minus the pro triathlete status!) he he.

I'm so stoked to say that I'm now running 2 hours at Kal Park, up and down the steep inclines with no orthotics, and minimalist shoes. I'm in the New Balance 101s with no support, and loose laces. My physio Tamara comments that she can finally see some muscle bulk in my feet. They were just skin and bones before that. I'm pain free walking around my house today after a 2 hour run. As much as I like to ride bikes, running is my true love. Needless to say, I'm a happy girl today.

Here is Catriona's blog:

For the past 3 years I’ve been battling achilles discomfort and pain on a regular basis throughout each season. I’d generally spend at least 4-6 weeks during competition mode on the X trainer trying to maintain cardio-vascular fitness when I wasn’t able to run. At the end of last season following a similar pattern of interrupted racing and training I reached the end of my patience! Mentally I was drained from being in constant limbo: always in pain, on the verge of pain or expecting pain. I was not able maintain enough regular training to maximise my running potential and this was leaving me feeling like I was underachieving and falling short of my own expectations and goals.  I think perhaps the worst thing was that I was associating running with frustration and pain and I had lost enjoyment and passion for a sport that I had once really loved. It wasn’t so much my competitive future that was worried about, more that I seemed to be facing a future of not being physically able to do some of the things that I loved. I really was beginning to think that I was not going to be able to enjoy walking and running pain free again. My physio and good friend Jane suggested (very strongly!!) that we needed to step back from managing my achilles pain to working out why I was repetitively sore – all scans and tests indicated that functionally the tendons and muscles themselves were fine. With my focus always being the next race we had never taken, and never really had the opportunity to concentrate on the causes as we were always sidelined by trying to manage the effects. My stubbornness to push in training and racing did not lend itself to creating the time or space to really investigate why I was constantly in pain. I have to absolve Jane of all responsibility here – she would patch me up and suggest that we make the effort to work out what was happening and I’d be off mangling myself up again and demanding the inevitable quick fix. Equally frustrating for both of us. So, in early November we went to Cardiff to visit Joanne Elphinston – a functional stability and movement specialist. Jane and Joanne are colleagues and it was Jane’s feeling that Joanne’s expert eye and guidance were what was needed to put me back on track. Without going into to much detail, our first meeting was quite intense on a physical, emotional and mental level (sounds like a relationship!) I was moved to the point of tears when I was told that there was so much that could be done that could help me to overcome my achilles pain but also to become more efficient, biomechanically better and generally far more aware of my own physical state. It’s an action in progress. I am now two and a half months down the line. I’m more aware of what I am doing, how I am running, what needs to change and how to change it. There are new neural pathways to turn on and just as interestingly there are a whole lot of things to turn off.  Becoming more aware of how I feel and how I move has been a great eye opener. I am more relaxed physically in running form but also just more relaxed generally. I can now run continuously, although not particularly quickly (!) for around an hour (hence the half marathon seeming like a challenge) without pain and I am looking forward to regaining running fitness. Most importantly, I eagerly anticipate my next run: I’m not hurting so I can’t wait to get out there and dance along the trails. It’s making me happy again, and that can’t be a bad thing. I’ve just turned 34 and for the past 20 years through sheer strength and fitness I’ve cultivated particular biomechanics that seemed to function perfectly well until my body reached saturation point and refused to compensate and absorb the malpractice that I was inflicting on it! This manifested itself in three years of achilles grumbling that I am now putting to rights with expert guidance. Things are by no means perfect and there is a long way to go – but they are definitely changing for the better.