I run with a midfoot strike. I run a few miles at most each week. I wear a pair of Nike Dart 9s.
My right foot likes the Dart 9s. My left foot, however, just has been killing me. Each time I land on my midfoot and bring my heel up, it feels like I’m ripping the bottom part of my heel away from the rest of my foot.
I once tried running up a slope with my Dart 9s. Bad mistake. It felt as if I had literally grabbed my heels and toes and started pulling them apart with an incredible force.
I tried wearing three socks on my left foot, and that alleviated the problem to a very minor extent.
Why is my left foot responding to the shoe completely different from my right foot?
What can I do to alleviate this problem? Better shoes? New insole? What?
Should I suck up the pain, run in my Dart 9s for the next year, and replace them (I usually wear shoes for ~ a year).
Plantar fasciitis most likely. Find yourself a golf ball, tennis ball, baby food jar-something you can roll under your arch. Ice first then roll. Or freeze a small bottle of water and do both at once.
Stretch your calves.
Check where you’re running, a crowned road will put more pressure on one side. Also, I’ve never seen an initial case that hit both feet at once.
Replace your shoes more often. Shoes are only good for 300-500 miles. The cushioning material also age-hardens even without use.
Crowned roads? I run back and forth on a sidewalk about a third of a mile long, so shouldn’t both feet be experiencing the pain? The sidewalk is indeed tilted though (the left side is higher than the right side).
I’ll make sure to stretch my calves too. I’ve been ditching stretches for the most part - just some basic butterflies, toe reaches, and squat-stretches.
In any case, do you recommend that I continue running, or should I take a break altogether? What shoes are good for planar fasciitis?
You’ll need to take a break. Cycling or swimming to cross-train if possible. Stay off the feet. Shoes are not normally the cause unless badly worn or totally wrong. Tight calves are the most frequent cause.
It’s very rare for overuse injuries to hit both sides at once.
runner pat gives solid advice. I’ll throw in my $.02 since you’re bumping the thread and all, as a sufferer of plantar faciitis. Here’s a WebMD overview, which summarizes the list of possible causes. It turned out for me, the cause was the shoes, but it can be different for different people, and for people who are on their feet for work vs. people who run for sport/fitness.
You can go the cheap route that I chose and play craps with different brands of shoes and arch supports that work for you. My craps game got lucky and I found a brand right away that works with my feet and the faciitis healed nicely - but it took about 8 months before I could really walk around the house barefoot regularly. The faciitis also came back about 4 years later before I realized a pair of shoes I had ordered were delivered without the removable insole. When the inflammation came back and I bought some arch supports, it wasn’t until then that I realized the original ones were missing.
So that’s just me, as someone who is on her feet all day and is not a runner. For someone who runs, it could be a technique and stretching issue as already mentioned, it could be a combination of those, or something else as the list of causes in the article has a few other possibilities.
There’s a bunch of good information that’s searchable out there, as far as what physical therapy you can do yourself at home. One good one is to use a 16-oz water bottle, fill it up and freeze it, and use that to do your icing and stretching at the same time.
Yeah, I’m not sure you need to bump this - Pat looks to be right on. It definitely sounds like Plantar Fasciitis. And for sure, after you rest up/get some therapy on your foot, go to a good running store and get fitted for a pair of running shoes that work for you. Then replace them more often than once a year.
I agree with everything said so far, and just want to add my experience with plantar fasciitis (I’ll abbreviate it as PF if that’s OK). I developed PF in 2010 in my left foot when I deployed to an Army base and had to walk a lot on loose gravel, which stresses the calves and led to my PF, I believe. My symptoms were very similar to yours - intense heel pain while walking, accompanied with a sore arch. I thought it might have been bone spurs until I tried treating it as PF. I did not see a doctor, nor am I as experienced as Runner Pat in these things, but I would have gone to the doc if things didn’t improve. Had to take it as easy as possible for a few weeks to heal - no running, but I haven’t had any issues since then. Rest, elevation, gentle stretching, ice, tape and Dr. Scholl’s athletic inserts was my road to recovery. Eventually my foot tendons “toughened up” and I could ditch the tape and insoles. I now run about 12 miles a week with no trouble in Saucony shoes with no additional insoles, but those were not a fun few weeks in 2010. Had it happened stateside, I would have probably avoided biking and any other exercise that stresses the calves and foot tendons, but I’m not a sports physiologist.
While treating my PF, I found that this taping pattern worked well enough to get me around base. It didn’t make the pain go away completely, but the arch support from the tape did much more than any insole or padding I had in my shoe at the time. You can use standard cloth athletic tape that they sell at Wal-Mart for around $2 a roll. I liked that the tape pattern didn’t go across the top of my foot, but it still managed to pull up on my arch enough to let me limp around without crutches. I was able to tape my foot myself. I removed the tape at night and kept my foot as dry as possible to keep the tape from loosening at work. After 2-3 weeks I was back to normal and was running 15 miles a week a few months later.
I was diagnosed with plantar fasciatus that resolved with stretching. Then I got achilles tendon tendenosis, and the very first thing the GP asked was how old my shoes were. Well, they were from the pleistocene so I went home, threw them away, went to a running shoe store (though I’m a hiker not a runner) and got fitted with good shoes and insoles. Presto, my tendenosis was better in ONE DAY and nearly gone in a week. No more waiting until they fall off my feet for me.
I only wore Nikes as soon as I could start choosing my own shoes, mostly out of brand loyalty/fashion. When I got serious about running I went to a running store where the clerk had me try on several different brands, all of similar cost and high quality. I ended up going with Saucony cause they simply felt the best. I think running shoes, like ski boots, tend to run consistently narrow or wider by brand, which is fine. Don’t get hung up on brand and just try on as many different brands as needed 'till you get the one that’s just right. I’ll bet your Nikes are great shoes, but only if they fit your foot type. I didn’t get fitted as much as simply exposed to other brands that I hadn’t considered because I thought all running shoes were basically the same - wrong.
I only use my new running shoes for exercise and use my old, busted running shoes as my “walking around” ones. Running in my two year old shoes feels like I’m wearing loafers compared to my newer shoes. Same brand, same model. To echo runner pat, it’s remarkable how dried out, flat and stiff the soles get over time and mileage. I was told that even if you don’t put 300-500 miles on them, the soles still degrade as the spongy cushion material vents gases and basically turns from a “fresh marshmallow” to a stale one over time (6-12 months is what the clerk said).