One little run

After a long layoff due to an injury, I finally ran a little bit today. And I mean a little - 2.5 miles.
Mainly, I did it so I'd know where my injury is in the recovery process before seeing the doctor. Results: not healed yet, but making slow progress.

In our last visit, the doctor and I kind of decided that if things weren't quite a bit better by now it might be time for a steroid shot.

As it turned out, the doctor who'd been seeing me was tied up in surgery, so I got a different doctor, a young woman who I'd never seen before. After examining my foot and asking a lot of questions she finally concluded that a shot wasn't the route to take, at least not yet. Seems it's a botox shot, and they wear off after about 6 months, so it couldn't be considered a permanent fix. Plus, it's not covered by insurance.

Her suggestion - and I was happy to take it - was a new kind of orthodic modification designed to take the pressure off the sensitive part of my foot. My problem is common: capsulitis. This happens when the joint on your second toe (where the toe is attached to the foot) just can't take the beating anymore and inflames. Seems I exacerbated the problem by running off all the protective padding on the ball of my foot (she said something about how this happens naturally to people at an "advanced" age). There's a lot of good information about this condition on the internet, including where I got the photo at the left (my foot is not nearly as perfect looking as this one). The red circle is where I hurt.

I've already tried two or three other modifications to the orthodic I use, and none of them did anything but make my foot feel worse. This one, though, is tolerable, and I'm going to stick with it and see how it does. Essentially, it raises the front part of my foot up with a pad just behind the ball of the foot. There's also an area cut out of the orthodic so that part of my foot doesn't touch much of anything under normal conditions.

I'm also going to start throwing in two or three short treadmill runs a week and see how I feel.