I’ve been running a lot again. Today I did another half marathon distance, because I got to 16k and thought “why not?”. My foot/neuroma has been behaving better, but after the long run this morning it’s been twinging a bit. Not badly, it’s just sometimes when I move my ankle around a lot I get a pin prick feeling in the ball of my foot.
It’s a bit frustrating because I don’t know how to treat it. I don’t want to stop running and I’ve always said that if it gets that bad then I need to get it treated properly. Okay… but actually right now I think that would be a bad idea, because I’m getting other discomfort around my ankle which probably means my biomechanics are a bit off and I should sort that out first. I don’t think that my hip strengthening did much. Well actually maybe it did, but nothing that helps my foot.
I still seem to have a lot of tightness in my inner ankle, which Dr Google tells me is my tibialis posterior muscle/tendon. This is responsible for foot stability during the gait cycle, it holds the arch strong and counteracts foot pronation, so if it’s not working properly, the foot flattens too much. Also, interestingly, this tendon actually connects to the metatarsal heads. Hello. Meaning that dysfunction here could be pulling the metatarsals out of alignment and potentially putting more pressure on the nerve? And not only that, but when I’m sat down and it tightens up, it could be pulling my metatarsals together and putting pressure on the nerve?! Maybe.
And indeed when it was twinging earlier, a bit of stretching of my ankle did seem to alleviate it.
It’s just frustrating to feel like you’re on the edge of injury though. I want to run tomorrow (just a few km slow) but it probably depends how it feels when I get up. Or I could have a lie in?
Rambles 