It's been 2 weeks since that fateful rainy night, when I first experienced a mysterious pain on the top of my foot.
I'm honestly still not sure where I actually went wrong. I can only speculate that I must have mis-stepped somewhere late in the run while going around puddles.
I've been told by many people that this injury should be obvious:
I ran about 55 miles in my Vibram Five-Fingers over the course of 3 weeks... POST MARATHON. I over did it using a new training technique.
OK, not the smartest thing to do in the world, but I was going off a percent of base mileage. So if I typically would've run about 200+ miles in those 3 weeks, then 25% in VFF's shouldn't seem all that far-fetched - especially when I've spend months strengthening my stride and feet by consistently running in racing flats and occasionally in Newtons.
I was also basing this off the sage rule: Listen to your body. I most certainly was listening to my body - My feet had never felt better in my life!... or at least until the 9th mile of my October 27th run. My cuboid pain had eased up significantly, my shin splits finally went away, my ITB and hip even felt better. These are things that have plagued me for YEARS!!
Something I did not consider with my VFF's:
Both feet have very small bunions. Nothing ridiculous, but big enough. I believe this has been caused by some of my dress shoes being too tight around the toe box. The resulting effect of the bunion is the second metatarsal actually gets forced upwards slightly. The foot muscles adjust and atrophy accordingly.
While running, there is then an increased force on my 2nd metatarsal, particularly when running more on my forefoot - and especially if my toes are forced to be separated (like in the VFF's). Typically this wouldn't be a problem for me in normal cushioned shoes.
SO, remove all cushion, separate my toes and there's absolutely no protection to that 2nd metatarsal head when striking on the ball of my foot. Add 55 miles and jumping around a bunch of puddles for a few weeks in one of the rainiest Octobers that Chicago has ever seen... and I have the makings of my own catastrophe. It appears that the muscles in my feet were simply not built up enough to handle the work load.
So much for listening to my body. This was a complete blind siding injury. Absolutely no prior indications that I was having a problem. No prior symptoms. No warnings. No way I could have recognized that my second metatarsal was bearing too much of the blow.
Hence I strongly feel that I couldn’t prevent it. In hind sight I don’t think I would have changed anything, except for what I've done since then. I clearly should not have run another step. I did a track workout the following day (when it still didn't feel too bad), then took 10 days off, then ran 5 easy last Friday per the recommendation of my doctor. Those were both not wise moves.
I have to accept this. The pain at this point is undeniable and not going away. I need to move on and concentrate on fixing it.
As of Sunday, I'm self-diagnosing this as a Stress Fracture of my 2nd metatarsal - in spite of my doctor telling me that it wasn’t on 2 separate occasions, and in spite of much research on numerous barefooting/VFF blogs (where people claim the exact same pains were soft-tissue related).
I had a MRI yesterday. It was a very sobering experience. I hit bottom. I'll see Dr Baker again on Friday for confirmation of the results. Unless some miracle occurs and he sees something that he can manually fix (ie, some sort of dislocation or pinched muscle/tendon) - then treatment for a stress fracture will take about 8 weeks. Doing the math from my diagnosis: that means I'm laid up until basically New Years Day.
A complete travesty, considering I was in the best shape of my life 2 weeks ago. Now I could only dream to walk without a limp. I will certainly lose fitness from here.
Instead I have to work on healing it, and as meticulously as possible so I can return without any trace or potential for relapse.
It remains to be seen how this may affect my plans for the London Marathon in April, 2010.
I'm honestly still not sure where I actually went wrong. I can only speculate that I must have mis-stepped somewhere late in the run while going around puddles.
I've been told by many people that this injury should be obvious:
I ran about 55 miles in my Vibram Five-Fingers over the course of 3 weeks... POST MARATHON. I over did it using a new training technique.
OK, not the smartest thing to do in the world, but I was going off a percent of base mileage. So if I typically would've run about 200+ miles in those 3 weeks, then 25% in VFF's shouldn't seem all that far-fetched - especially when I've spend months strengthening my stride and feet by consistently running in racing flats and occasionally in Newtons.
I was also basing this off the sage rule: Listen to your body. I most certainly was listening to my body - My feet had never felt better in my life!... or at least until the 9th mile of my October 27th run. My cuboid pain had eased up significantly, my shin splits finally went away, my ITB and hip even felt better. These are things that have plagued me for YEARS!!
Something I did not consider with my VFF's:
Both feet have very small bunions. Nothing ridiculous, but big enough. I believe this has been caused by some of my dress shoes being too tight around the toe box. The resulting effect of the bunion is the second metatarsal actually gets forced upwards slightly. The foot muscles adjust and atrophy accordingly.
While running, there is then an increased force on my 2nd metatarsal, particularly when running more on my forefoot - and especially if my toes are forced to be separated (like in the VFF's). Typically this wouldn't be a problem for me in normal cushioned shoes.
SO, remove all cushion, separate my toes and there's absolutely no protection to that 2nd metatarsal head when striking on the ball of my foot. Add 55 miles and jumping around a bunch of puddles for a few weeks in one of the rainiest Octobers that Chicago has ever seen... and I have the makings of my own catastrophe. It appears that the muscles in my feet were simply not built up enough to handle the work load.
So much for listening to my body. This was a complete blind siding injury. Absolutely no prior indications that I was having a problem. No prior symptoms. No warnings. No way I could have recognized that my second metatarsal was bearing too much of the blow.
Hence I strongly feel that I couldn’t prevent it. In hind sight I don’t think I would have changed anything, except for what I've done since then. I clearly should not have run another step. I did a track workout the following day (when it still didn't feel too bad), then took 10 days off, then ran 5 easy last Friday per the recommendation of my doctor. Those were both not wise moves.
I have to accept this. The pain at this point is undeniable and not going away. I need to move on and concentrate on fixing it.
As of Sunday, I'm self-diagnosing this as a Stress Fracture of my 2nd metatarsal - in spite of my doctor telling me that it wasn’t on 2 separate occasions, and in spite of much research on numerous barefooting/VFF blogs (where people claim the exact same pains were soft-tissue related).
I had a MRI yesterday. It was a very sobering experience. I hit bottom. I'll see Dr Baker again on Friday for confirmation of the results. Unless some miracle occurs and he sees something that he can manually fix (ie, some sort of dislocation or pinched muscle/tendon) - then treatment for a stress fracture will take about 8 weeks. Doing the math from my diagnosis: that means I'm laid up until basically New Years Day.
A complete travesty, considering I was in the best shape of my life 2 weeks ago. Now I could only dream to walk without a limp. I will certainly lose fitness from here.
Instead I have to work on healing it, and as meticulously as possible so I can return without any trace or potential for relapse.
It remains to be seen how this may affect my plans for the London Marathon in April, 2010.
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