Another PF Thread

Hi all,

Was hoping for some wisdom from all of you who have been battling plantar fasciitis. A bit of background: I always have considered myself a runner before a triathlete. Last year my A race was Two Oceans Ultra (56km), which I trained for and finished relatively injury free, although I had an early diagnosis of patellar tendonopathy (4 months before the race). After Two Oceans I decided to focus my off season on transitioning to minimalist shoes, after reading Born to Run and lots of other things that convinced me my knee problems were related to my heel strike. I did everything according to the book, very slow transition, rotating shoes, some drills for my form, etc. I felt good running, but once I got up above 7 or 8 kms I started to have calf pain, and eventually had a minor strain that kept me from running for a month. Feeling frustrated, I switched back to my bulky pronation control shoes, and did just a couple of short 5-7km runs.

Then I started having foot pain. Nothing major, and not the horror stories I've read about PF, but I got checked out by the sports doctor anyway. He said I had some very minor plantar fasciitis, and I needed to take at least 3 weeks off of running. He prescribed me an NSAID to take at night, and told me to get some neutral shoes. His opinion was that I had changed my stride with my minimalist shoes, but that my calves weren't strong/flexible enough to do much distance in minimalist shoes. But when I switched back to pronation control shoes my feet didn't like them with my new stride, thus the injury. (He's a long-course triathlete, for what it's worth)

I took almost a full month off running, and am now easing back into my routine with neutral shoes. But after running only 20 miles in all of January, nothing more than 7km at once, I've got mild foot pain again. I can definitely run through this discomfort, but I don't want it to degenerate. It's incredibly frustrating, going from 40-50 km / week to less than 10 and still feeling tentative about over-training. How have you all dealt with this? My A race this year is Savageman 70, and while I've got plenty of time to rest and still build up running volume, eventually I am going to need to increase time on the road. Any advice?