General Discussion Triathlon Talk » Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis? Rss Feed  
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2014-07-22 3:41 PM


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Subject: Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis?
I've had plantar faciitis since February. Really didn't know what it was, thought "how did I hurt my heel?" It really flared up bad in April after a particularly hilly off road 10K, did great but I was limping after the race. Then I googled "heel pain" and the bad news came in. The entire month of May I took off running and just jumped on the bike. I used Ice/massage/stretching/night time strassburg sock/spenco heel lifts and wore clogs at work. Made my comeback slow - lost TONS of speed - but the heel pain is still there. Pain sort of comes and goes, is this a chronic thing now? Anyone get past this?


2014-07-22 4:00 PM
in reply to: Dan Estrada

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Subject: RE: Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis?
It took me about a year to fully get completely symptom free.

Fast forward to 6 years later, now I have tightness and soreness in my Achilles tendon. I think they are both a result of tightness in the series of muscles and tendons starting from the calf and going down and around the back of the heel to the plantar fascia. It would seem like stretching would help this, but I found that stretching after I got plantar fasciitis didn't help; for me, going from strictly running to triathlon (with less total running volume) seemed to be what eventually fixed it. I also cut back on my intensity for a while. I'm not a doctor, just a runner, but it seems to me that 8 minute miles are about 3x as hard on that tissue as 10 minute miles (for me, 10K pace vs. marathon pace). Your results may vary.
2014-07-22 8:16 PM
in reply to: kbeddoes

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Subject: RE: Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis?
guy at my work had 4 sessions of dry needling ( not acupuncture) and it went away. hurts like a sob though
2014-07-22 8:49 PM
in reply to: Dan Estrada

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Subject: RE: Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis?
Yes. I had it for nearly five years in my teens and early 20's, probably because running shoes back then weren't really designed properly for kids and (later) women's feet, particularly for the amount of mileage and speedwork I was doing. I think I tried almost everything short of cortisone shots (I refused) and surgery. Nothing really worked. A former teammate with a nagging Achilles injury recommended a new massage therapist in town. She used to work on the East German Olympic team and looked every bit the part--big, bone-crushing, and merciless. I could barely walk after my first session, and I think I just managed to get out the door before throwing up from the sheer agony of that treatment. I think there were three more treatments. My PF has never come back. To be fair, maybe not all due to the massage--it was around the time I quit college track/cross country and I didn't do speedwork or races on the track anymore, which for some reason really aggravated my issues. I also did a lot of calf stretches and strengthening recommended by the therapist. To this day, I sometimes think my body is afraid to get PF again because it remembers how painful those sessions were!

PF can have different root causes so a long-term "cure" will probably involve different things for different people--in my case I think it was the massage treatments breaking up scar tissue that was perpetuating the problem (I've had this issue with other injuries; my body seems to like forming scar tissue), and stretching, strengthening, different shoes and running surfaces to eliminate the root causes (probably tight calf muscles and too much speedwork on hard surfaces).
2014-07-23 3:28 AM
in reply to: Dan Estrada

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Subject: RE: Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis?
I had PF flare up about 22 months ago. I was slow on the uptake wrt what it was and attributed it to aging. I kept running on it as the pain tended to go away as I eased into a run. Following on though it got progressively worse since it turned out to be something more than aging. The worst was just standing in one place. Anyhow following these 2 months of ignorance I finally got to a doctor and then on to 10 weeks of physio. The physio (deep massage) was excrutiatingly painful at times. Also no running at all for those 10 weeks. It slowly got better following the 10 weeks to the point where it was time to test it again. Any it passed the test. Mostly. I had to start very slow again. The PT recommended nothing more than 30 minute runs while getting going again and if the pain flares up to stop immediately. Anyhow fast forward to today and I am pretty much pain free. Mostly. I still feel some discomfort in the foot after runs but its very manageable. Most weeks I get in 4 runs a week totalling between 20-25 k per week. The longest of them might stretch to 40 ish minutes. I'm also very diligent about stretching before and after runs, and icing after. I also had to make some changes in the shoes I wear not only for running (Hokas have helped me immensely), but also in the day to day walking around shoes. Also no more barefoot. You'll get there but it will take time and diligence for sure. Good luck...
2014-07-23 10:00 AM
in reply to: gr33n

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Subject: RE: Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis?
Had it for about 10 years, starting around 1999. I was mainly sedentary, office job, and playing basketball 1/week with friends. Those next mornings waking up after playing the night before was when it started. I was in my mid-30s, and had slowly gained about 40 lbs since high school, when I weighed about 155 lbs. 5'9", male, medium build. So I'm almost 200 lbs, and by American standards wouldn't be considered overweight.

But on the BMI scale, I was well into overweight, bordering on obese.

Couldn't shake the heel pain / PF for 10 years. I'd run a couple miles a couple times/week, start to feel better fitness-wise, lose a pound or two, then the feet would be barking the next morning. Had to hold the hand rail and support most of my weight coming down the stairs. Didn't hurt while running though. Tried orthotics (custom), stretching, ice, etc. Nothing really seemed to make any difference.

Then I got active again, for real, in 2010, by swimming. The idea was that swimming was about as low impact as you get on feet, and I just wanted initially to stop getting fatter. Between swimming and eating a little better, the weight dropped off by 1-2 lbs/week. At some point, after about 35 lbs had been shed, I got up one morning and noticed my feet didn't hurt.

So I don't know your weight status, and everyone's condition is different, but the weight loss is what fixed my PF. Using a low impact exercise to drop the weight was the real fix for me.

And swimming was then my gateway to triathlon...



2014-07-23 6:07 PM
in reply to: Dan Estrada

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Subject: RE: Anyone really "get over" plantar faciitis?
I've had it and healed completely from it. From my understanding PF results from more stress than your body can handle (stress from overtraining, working too hard, emotional stress, bad diet, not enough rest/recovery). It could be a muscle imbalance or bad shoe fit, too. What helped me is that I ultimately improved my diet by eating more Paleo-like, I started working toward strengthening my feet by walking barefoot as much as I could and eased into using minimalist shoes (nike frees, nike 4.0 flyknit) almost exclusively. I stopped stretching as a habit and instead focused more on dynamic stretching which naturally occurs during my resistance workouts like when I did squats barefoot. I also learned how to run more on my forefoot and less on my heel (Chi Running) and I focused my training so much more on building my aerobic base as a priority and then sprinkling in some intense (speed) workouts very sparingly. Lastly, I have focused on managing my emotional health better. Emotions do play an important part in our health so being more open and allowing, slowing down, saying "no" to more work, etc have all helped me become stronger and healthy I believe.

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