Run Faster

Treadmill
By Caylynn via Flickr

I’m sure you’re kind of sick of me talking about this, but I’m still having problems with plantar fasciitis. I was able to run several times last week with no problems, but when I tried to run on the treadmill at my local rec center on Monday, I started having increased pain almost immediately, forcing me to stop after just about two miles. I was a little bit puzzled about this setback since things had seemed to be going so well. Fortunately, I already had a physical therapy appointment scheduled for yesterday.

When I explained what had happened to my PT (Mark Plaatjes), it took him only a moment to come up with an answer. It seems that people’s running mechanics change quite a bit when running on a treadmill compared with running on the ground, including a change to the range of motion of the foot and the toe-off. For me, this means that while the shoe inserts he customized for me seemed to really help when I ran outside or on the indoor track, they were basically ineffective on the treadmill, which is why I started to have pain so quickly on Monday’s treadmill run. This was fairly surprising to me - I guess I had never really thought much about how different treadmill running was from regular running, beyond following the advice I usually see to set the treadmill at a slight incline to make up for the lack of wind resistance.

Because I’m kind of a geek about these things, I wanted to do a little bit more research into this, which I’ll share with you now.

According to Peak Performance, during a treadmill run, the function of your feet and legs changes from creating a propulsive force as you would on an ordinary run to simply repositioning your center of mass to keep yourself stable. Also, on the the treadmill, your stride rate is generally lower, your stride length is longer, and the length of time you spend on your support leg increases significantly when compared with running on the ground. These differences, plus increased foot drag which is exaggerated even more on an incline, seem to increase the risk of foot injuries, including plantar fasciitis.

So what’s the moral of the story? I guess a couple, at least for me:

• I shouldn’t run on the treadmill very often since it really seems to throw my biomechanics out of whack.
• When I run on the treadmill, I shouldn’t use an incline.

I hope everyone here in the northern hemisphere is enjoying the first days of spring!

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It’s time for me to face it - I really am injured. It’s been almost 2 weeks since my last decent run. I’ve run just two times since February 15 - a 2-mile run last Sunday, and 1 mile on the treadmill on Tuesday. After Sunday’s run, my left heel didn’t feel too bad. So, Tuesday, I thought I would see if I could get in 4 miles at a conservative pace on the treadmill, but I was having so much pain that I thought I’d better stop at 1. This, as you might imagine, makes me a bit depressed.

Although I haven’t been to the doctor yet (I know, I really should, but work has been excessively crazy the past couple of weeks) I strongly suspect plantar fasciitis. My symptoms are pretty classic - pain in the morning which decreases after walking a bit, but increases again after trying to run.

Here’s a video that discusses how plantar fasciitis is diagnosed and treated. It also shows a few stretching exercises, some of which I’ve been doing, and others which I plan to start today:

So, what’s my plan for treating my problem? So far:

• I’ve been icing my foot about once a day. I’m planning to increase this to 2-3 times a day to see if that helps.
• Rest. As I mentioned above, I haven’t run much at all, although I’ve been getting in some non-weight-bearing exercises to try and maintain some level of fitness.
• Stretching my feet and calves.
• Massaging my feet. I think I’m going to make some time this weekend to see a professional instead of only trying to do this myself.
• I haven’t done this yet, but I may start taping my foot to see if that helps.

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Since this problem has dragged on for a couple of weeks already, I’ve pretty much decided that an April half marathon is out of the question. I’m still hopeful about doing the Colfax Half Marathon in May, although I may have to scale back my goal from trying to set a PR to just doing it more as a fun run.

I hope you don’t need this information, but in case you’re interested, here’s some more information on preventing and treating plantar fasciitis:

• Heathtouch.com
• SportsInjuryClinic.net - That page also includes a link that shows a foot taping technique to support the foot while it’s healing.

And here’s another video - this one shows massage techniques for treating plantar fasciitis:

Hope you’re feeling fit and are having a good week. If you have any tips that might help me recover more quickly, I’d appreciate hearing them!

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