OK, so running @ 70 miles in 10 days, for me, was not a good idea. Especially when 17 of the last 22 miles was done with a #24 pack. Actually, after the first 50 or so, I was not so bad, but then, of course, I decided to stretch it out a bit and run a long day with extra weight. Then a couple days later I made another unwise decision to run @10 miles barefoot along the river trail. That kinda sealed the deal and foot pain ensued. The morning after the 10 mile run, I was able to walk, but I did not have an unencumbered full range of motion. On my walk with the dogs, I worked to find the areas where my feet were not working right and see if I could induce discomfort to understand where I needed help. Well, as is typical of my feet and my approach, my heels were hurting. I found that when I stepped, I did not want to flex my foot at the point of lift-off. I wanted to keep my heel rigid. So I picked up my foot, plantar flexed and then took a couple steps. Yep, sure enough that was a pain inducer. I repeated that a couple times and the pain diminished a bit, but never completely went away. I also had some pain in my left knee. It was not a persistent problem, but came and went.

That was Sunday (3/31) and now today my feet are feeling better after having some rest. I can still feel some weakness and tension in my left heel. If I stretch my foot, I can engage it and feel the problem in there. My plan is to run a little tomorrow as a diagnostic run, to see how the healing is going.

My hope is that I will learn when I am pushing myself too far and when it's OK to keep applying pressure. I am trying to take recovery more seriously as a necessary and integral part of my running.