Confessions of a Heel Striker

I've been running for about 15 years. Over that time I've enjoyed only a few isolated injuries: a busted knee after my first marathon (putting me on the DL for nearly a year) and many a turned ankle with their associated weeks of down-time. Until recently all of the injuries could be traced to fairly simple causes, running with super old shoes or tripping over pine cones (yeah, one magnolia cone in Pasadena knocked me out for two months!)

Enter plantar fasciitis. This little pain-in-the-heel has caused me grief to no end since moving to Virginia earlier this year. To date I have absolutely no probable explanation for it. I've been running relatively low mileage compared to the previous 12 months; the trail terrain I've been on is markedly softer than the road / mountain combination I was running in So Cal. I recently took about four weeks off which pretty much ended the pain. At that point I visited my local running store for advice. Luckily one of the owners has dealt with plantar fasciitis and had some good advice:

• calf raises throughout the day,
• stretch more regularly,
• pick up small items with my toes, and, interestingly,
  
• incorporate barefoot stride outs into my weekly running routine.

The last item should help strengthen my foot over time and potentially reduce the underlying cause of the injury. After a few weeks I was having little to no pain by incorporating most of the exercises (except barefoot running) into my daily routine. Then, about a month ago, the heel pain started creeping back in.

In researching things more I've come to realize that I'm a full-fledged, hard core heel striker (see photo from the 12/08 Death Valley Marathon). In the early stages of a run (or whenever I'm feeling particularly spry) I tend to run with a forefoot/midfoot strike. But as the weekly mileage piles up and/or in the later stages of a long run I tend to drop my heel. This practice can potentially lead to a host of knee and foot related problems. Whether my heel strike is partially responsible for my plantar fasciitis or not, I have yet to determine.

In response I've taken steps to correct my foot strike in response to the mounting evidence I've recently read about the benefits of midfoot/forefoot striking (more on that in a later post). And later this summer I'm scheduled for "gait analysis" at the University of Virginia's Center for Endurance Sport. The director of the SPEED clinic there recently spoke at the local running store and encouraged me to really work on my running form (possibly at the expense of speed training or high mileage) this summer. I've also begun to incorporate barefoot running into my workouts and have attempted to carry the barefoot form over to my runs with shoes. To say the least, its an interesting exercise. I'll post more on barefeet later...until then, go run!