My Calfs are Killing Me - YES!

One thing that has been a constant ever since I started running is that there's always a noagging pain somewhere below my waist. I had pain in my knee, my feet, my calfs, my hamstrings, my butt... Usually, the pain lasts for a few days or weeks and eventually goes away. As soon as that happens, I guess we just go a bit harder or longer and then something else hurts. That's fine.

What is not fine is when something hurts for more than a few weeks. As you may or may not know, I've been plagued with a pain at the insertion of the right Achilles since February. I've tried many things but I could never get rid of the pain.

I've always suspected that improving my stride might help. During my post-Haliburton two week break, I re-read "Born to Run". After my break, since I would have to start running slowly, I decided to insert small amounts of VibramFF running and to be really carefull to strike with the forefoot. The sole of my running shoes show that I'm more of a mid-foot striker and I want to try to move forward a bit.

Anyway, to make a long story short, my last two runs have been Achilles-pain free. I've had a few semi-pain-free runs this summer, but my last two runs were truly pain free. On the other hand, my calfs are killing me, but that's a welcome change that was to be expected with moving to a forefoot strike. My running on those runs was really comfortable, at a reasonably fast pace (marathon pace).

Now I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm hoping that this is behind me. I will definitely keep running short distances in the Vibrams to keep me honest. For example, yesterday I did a quick km around the block before going for a 10km run in my Adizeros. I'll keep going that until the weather gets too cold.