Managing Pain

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had to deal with an “overuse” injury, mainly because I haven’t really been overusing anything since competing in college.  Memories of running from the start of high school through college, likely flawed, are pocked with dealing with one stress-induced injury after another.  I was able to compete pretty regularly, so it couldn’t have been that bad.  Still, I dealt with a lot of injuries, particularly involving my knees.

Glory Days!  My high school conference championships when I could run reasonably fast.  Of course, this was before color film had been invented.

Had I made a few decisions differently, I probably wouldn’t have developed plantar fasciitis near the end of November.  In a nutshell, I had challenged all but one of my middle and high school age students to a one mile “race” on a treadmill.  The kids spend their PE block on Mondays at a local community center using rowing machines, spin bikes, the pool, and yes, the treadmills as they work to improve their cardiovascular fitness.  Despite making it a relay challenge – the students could pair up, each person running a portion of the mile – the boy who took up my challenge, a fairly cocky 16 year-old, was willing to go head-to-head for the entire mile.  The race was on!

I hate treadmills and haven’t run on one for several years.   I cautiously got my machine up to speed (I have literally flown off Larissa’s on account of starting it too fast) whereas the student got his up to speed pretty quickly.  Just a couple minutes in and I was already lagging!

My goal was to run a 6 minute mile, so I soon had it up to 10 mph.  While I had gained some of the time back, I was still behind at a half-mile.  I bumped the speed up another couple tenths and focused on running efficiently:  arms parallel to the direction I was “traveling”, landing on the balls of my feet, breathing in sync with my strides.  I was certainly pushing myself in a much different way than when I’m on the trails.  Then, at .72 of a mile on his machine, my competitor packed it in.  He had gone out flying and wasn’t able to keep the pace.  

“You can stop now, Mr. Wescott,” he said before conceding, “you won.”  

“It’s a one mile race!”  I shot back.  Realizing I was still slower than a 6 minute pace, I bumped the speed up to 10.5, then 10.7 and kept going until I had completed the distance.  Had the teen recruited a classmate and made it a relay, the two would have won handily.  He didn’t and I finished at somewhere closer to a 6:30 mile (damn the slow warm-up!) than 6.

Despite the PE teacher and I enjoying a bit of a laugh at this, it was the student who could have had the last laugh:  When I woke up the next morning, I was totally hobbled by pain in my right heel.  “Holy cow!” I thought, attributing the pain to having landed hard on a rock a few days earlier while out on a trail and unknowingly tweaking it on the treadmill.  I spent the next week thinking I had either badly bruised or broken the bone in my heel.  I learned how to tape my heel from a Youtube video, donned my heavily-padded Ascics in favor of my New Balance 110 trailrunners and tried to run through it.  This didn’t work and I was still in just as much pain as I had been that Tuesday morning.  

While I love my New Balance 110's, they're a "minimalist"-type shoe and don't have the same shock absorption of a lot of beefier trail running shoes like my old Ascics.

More on-line research led me to concluding I had plantar fasciitis instead of a bruised or broken bone.  It was weird, though, because stepping on rocks in my neoprene wetsuit socks was extremely painful and I wouldn’t have thought tissue could cause that type of pain.  I took the next week off from running and enjoyed unseasonably dry and warm weather by riding my bike and paddling.  I resumed running the third week, simply taking things slower and being careful on downhills – still wearing my Ascics.  By the fourth week, despite the presence of continual pain, I began running hard again.  The pain didn’t increase, though I was quick to pop a couple Ibuprofen and ice my heel immediately upon finishing a run.  I found, too, standing as much as I could throughout the school day, helped.  And I was wearing my Ascics all the time.  Serendipitously, I had just picked up a pair of Sidas insoles that had been gifted to me for helping out at this past summer’s Squamish Arc’terxy ultra-marathon.  They’ve been living inside my Ascics since the injury and have cushioned my heel amazingly well!

The Sidas insoles which have been saviours since my injury.

Cross-country skiing and the Christmas holidays took me off the running trails and, by this past Tuesday (Dec. 31), my heel was feeling the best that it had been since the injury.  I was at the point where I was calling my case of plantar fasciitis “amusing”:  I was able to run fairly hard and still improve on the pain, it seemed I was overcoming the injury as I was figuring out how to deal with it.  And then I went for one more hard run around Trudi’s Trail.

The Christmas holiday included lots of cross-country skiing and sledding up at Whistler Olympic Park

 in Callaghan Valley.

Whether it was because I didn’t ice it afterwards or because something happened while on the trail, I was in significant pain just a few hours later.  I’d squeezed the run in just before darkness fell, so I had to make supper as soon as I got back and couldn’t do anything for my heel.  New Year’s plans with the family further interfered with doing anything to take care of it and it was a shooting, burning pain I was dealing with as we drove into Vancouver.  Even New Year’s Day, I was totally hobbled, not unlike that first Tuesday over a month back.  I was baffled as much as I was frustrated.  Looking at my schedule, I knew I wouldn’t have a chance to go for a trail run for at least a couple days.  I also knew, given the amount of pain, I shouldn’t try running on it.  Our village’s “Dip & Dash” New Year’s celebration was scheduled for 11 AM down at the beach and I slipped my Ascics on once again for the walk down with Larissa and the kids.

Larissa snapped a shot as Keaton, Elena and I joined the throng!

I take part in the Dip & Dash for the social aspect of it.  As I told Larissa afterward, I get cold and wet all by myself quite regularly.  It’s really fun to be with a bunch of people from our community as a new year begins, a sort of fresh start awaiting us as we wish one another well.

On our walk back up to our house, we were blessed with the company of John and Rose Dudley, two of the most stalwart Lions Bay “trailblazers”, the people who directly contributed to creating the trails I now enjoy running on.  The trail system is largely John’s vision he and his friends have carried out.  Both John and Rose are extremely supportive of my trail running, frequently inquiring on how things are going.  “My heel is back to hurting quite a bit again,” I told John as we made our way up the hill.  He showed some concern, then got back to razzing me about not spending more time splashing about in the water.  

John and Rose Dudley are heroes in my book.  John is not only the visionary behind our Lions Bay trails, he's the workhorse who doesn't stop building. And Rose is right alongside him. This is after last year's Vancouver 10K Sun Run.

 Later that afternoon, though, the pain was greatly reduced.  I was amazed and baffled anew.  I struggled with the decision to rest it or run.  Imagining being out on the Totally Unnecessary Trail was too enticing, though, and by 3, Kona and I were on our way up for an hour+ trail run.

*     *     *

I made a number of mistakes that November Monday afternoon.  The first was likely my selection of shoes, the New Balance 110’s.  While they’re great for the relatively padded trails I run on, they offer little shock absorption.  I ran in racing flats throughout high school and college that similarly lacked shock absorption, but college was more than a few years ago.  In essence, I hadn’t built up for the pounding my feet were about to take running at, for me, a fast pace on a treadmill.

I also didn’t warm up properly, something I was well aware of at the time.   Plans to get to the gym a few minutes early to get a bit of a run around outside were thwarted when unexpected school duties cropped up at the very end of the day.  And, just before my running challenge was accepted, I’d been competing in a 500 meter rowing race (I had never used a rowing machine!) another student challenged me to.  While cardiovascularly I was warmed up, my legs and feet weren’t ready for running.

*     *     *

For whatever reason, the pain never got worse after my New Year’s day run.  I could certainly feel strain in my arch at various points in the run, but I was sure to pop two Ibuprofen and iced my heel when I got back.  When I went to bed that night I was thinking, “We’ll see what it’s like when I get up in the morning.”  

I’m conditioned now to carefully hold onto the bedpost as I lower my legs to take my first steps of the day.  Extreme pain first thing in the morning is a common plantar fasciitis symptom given that the fascia contracts when we sleep with our toes pointed down.  But even first thing the next morning, there wasn’t much pain.  In the days that have passed, while the pain has persisted, it’s more of the dull, background type of pain and I feel like I’m back to attempting to manage the pain as I overcome the injury.  I’m grateful to not be back at square one with my case of plantar fasciitis.  But after what seemed like a setback, I no longer find it amusing and just want it over.

UPDATE, December 2017:  I should have posted this long ago, but the reality of plantar fasciitis is you actually have to take time off from running.  I was unable to run through it.  I tried running a 50k trail run (the Squamish 50) that August, but on account of not being able to fully train, I crashed and burned.  It was only after this failure that I took 6 to 8 weeks fully off, before slowly returning to running.  I wear different shoes now, only using the 110's occasionally, and haven't had any symptoms.  The key for me was the extreme calf tightness:  that was my warning sign, I just didn't know how to interpret it.