Plantar Fasciitis

I'd have to say that plantar fasciitis is the devil's #2 weapon against man, right up there with pride! I had it for about 6 months back in 2004 and beat it for a while, only for it to flare up later.

After reading up on the injury, I learned that, essentially, the thick muscles and ligaments on the bottom of my feet had torn. This caused my feet to tingle with pain during the course of the day. The tissue would begin to repair itself while I slept, but every morning when I woke up, my first step out of bed would destroy any healing that had taken place. Wearing hard-soled dress shoes to work compounded the problem, but I didn't have any other option.

What cured my ailment, you ask? Well, thanks for allowing me to share! I tried rolling my foot over golf and tennis balls, but that only provided temporary relief. Anti-inflammatories weren't a 100% solution either.

I ended up wearing a Dynasplint night splint to bed for 3 months to get rid of it. (Talk about patience, Amanda was a saint for living through that!) The folks at Dynasplint say that the boot applies a "low-load, prolonged-duration stretch." This just means that, in addition to fixing the angle of my foot/calf in a stretched position, it would apply slight and continuous tension through the use of springs. Most of the boots I had seen in running magazines could fix my foot/calf at a fixed angle, but this pales in comparison to what the Dynasplint did.

While I wore the boot, I also gave up running cold turkey for another 6 months -- very hard for me to do. These days I'm back to running about 15 miles a week, mostly in 5 mile increments, and have been able to keep the injury at bay with the help of some good insoles.

I stumbled across Shock Doctor insoles. I forget what tuned me into their product, but I do remember calling the company and speaking to a vice-president about using the insoles to treat plantar fasciitis. Given my situation, he recommended the Ultra2 insoles. They have a very strong stabilizing structure going all the way up your big toe.

Many runners spend big bucks on custom orthotics. Luckily, I found something off the shelf that worked. And since there was no retailer in my area, they offered to send a free pair to try as long as I agreed to give my podiatrist a few extra pair. That's a deal!