Heel pain

I woke up yesterday with quite a bit of pain in the back of my left heel. I checked out the symptoms on the web and as I suspected, it seemed as though one of the scourges of long-distance runners, achilles tendonitis might have struck.

I got up and gingerly did a few calf lifts, then stretched my calves. A few minutes later the pain had subsided, and by the end of the day it had vanished altogether. Today when I woke up there was just a hint of discomfort, but nothing too painful, and again it vanished entirely after a few calf lifts and stretches. However, I am worried this might be the start of something chronic and I am not sure what to do about it.

For one thing, I don't know quite what has brought it on. I haven't increased the length of my daily run very much, but the total for the week has increased quite a lot recently, so maybe it is overtraining. Perahaps my attempts to avoid running on my heel have pushed me too far the other way. Running too much on your forefoot is said to put strain on your calves and achilles tendons. Maybe it is just that my tendon has been weakened by years of shoe-wearing, as the barefoot runners would have us believe. Possibly it had nothing to do with running at all. I did play tennis for about two hours on Sunday before my run, so maybe the overall strain was just too much. Or maybe it is a combination of all of these factors.

Looking back though, I have a slight suspicion that I did not warm up quite as conscientiously before my Sunday run as I normally do, although I did do all my usual stretches afterwards. I didn't warm up much before the tennis match either, for that matter.

So for the moment, I will work on the assumption that this is the cause. Tonight when I run, I will make sure I do the full warm-up, including a couple of sets of calf lifts, and see if I have any pain tomorrow morning. If so, I will take two rest days instead of my usual one, and see if that helps.