Hi everyone,
Ok first post so I'll give a bit of background info, I'm 24 years old and have been running since I was 13. I'm really a middle distance runner and I've run competitively on the track where I did 800m and 1500m usually. These days I just run to keep in shape and for fun, haven't ran for a club since 2008.
Ok now for the injury, don't know if this first bit is relevant but I'll mention it anyway. About 3 years ago I was out running with a friend who does longer distances (10K ect) we ended up running about 8 miles I think. I hadn't really run that far before but since I was doing competitive track at the time I was fit enough to do it. About 3 or 4 miles in I started to feel a blister developing on my left foot. I didn't really want to stop and let my friend down so I kept running but I started shifting the weight on my foot so I wouldn't keep landing on the blister. After finishing the top of my foot started hurting. I think I'd somehow twisted it across the top from trying to not land on the blister. It hurt quite a bit and I was limping for a few days. It seemed to heal really quickly though and I was running again after about a week. Never had a problem again until recently.
In August I had enrolled to do a charity 5k. A few days before I was staying over at a friends house. I was sleeping in a cramped area without much space. The next day I noticed my right arm and left foot where a little tingly and were twitching a bit, I assumed I must have been sleeping on them funny and had slightly twisted them or something. On the morning of the 5k my arm felt better but my foot still felt a bit off. I didn't want to pull out so I thought I'd just do a really good stretch and warm up and start the race, and if my foot started to hurt or feel worse I'd stop right away. Did the race and my foot felt ok. After though it really started hurting and by lunch time I was limping quite badly. Similar kind of pain to the first time and in exactly the same place. Sort of like a numb tingly shooting pain, same sort of thing you might get if you hit your thumb with a hammer. The same as the first time it got better really quickly though. After a week it feel good enough to run on, but I left it a few more days just in case. Then did an easy half mile run to test it, and it felt ok. Then started back doing my quick mile runs again (I prefer middle distance as I said). Foot felt ok through most of September. Then in late Sep I got a cold so stopped running for a week or so. I was about to resume but noticed my foot felt a bit off again, not painful or anything but sort of a but tingly again. I though I'd stop running therefore and let it settle down.
Over the next few weeks just walking seemed to be making it worse and worse, although I was walking quite a lot, like I didn't have money for a taxi one night so I walked the 4 miles home
It got to the point where I was limping again but I wasn't worried as I had been limping the first two times and it had still got better really quickly. Still kept getting worse until I could hardly walk. At that point I went to the hospital cause it was hurting bad enough that I though I might have broken something. A nurse examined it, said it wasn't broken and nothing was ruptured in it. She said I should go to my gp which I did and was referred to a physio. Got tried waiting for an NHS physio so shelled out and went to a sports injury clinic.
Comments
The guy there was pretty good, had a good look at my foot, looked at my gait when walking and jogging lightly on the treadmill. He said my peroneal tendon is very tight and I may have developed some sort of tendinitis in that region. I asked about the top of my foot (cause that's where most of the pain is) and he said not to worry about that, that's just my extensor tendons which are hurting as the are trying to compensate for my peroneal tendon being so tight. If I work at loosening my peroneal tendon and calf in general that will cure the extensor tendon problem.
So I've been resting my foot a much as I can and doing some ankle and foot exercises which my physio told me to do. I can walk better now than when the problem was at it's worst but my foot's still not quite right and running is still out of the question I would say. I'm worried at how long it's taking to get better, anyone have any thoughts or experience of anything simalar?