Plantar Fasciitis

"Plantar what?"
Plantar [Fa-shitis]. Yes, Plantar Fasciatis is your new favorite personal plague. This is a common condition many people areafflicted by at some point in their adult lives. Many non-athletic people will suffer from this as a result of many years of desk sitting. I'll explain soon, but first; what is the Plantar Fascia?
The Plantar Fascia is a large ligament that connects the calcaneal tuberocity to the metatarsal heads between each toe. In the image of my right foot below, I have flexed my toes back to show the thickest part of the Plantar Fascia. I found some grisly images of Plantar Fascias on the web that look like they came out of a medical school lab session. Like me, you are probably not in Medical School, so my foot will suffice for this example.

Circled with arrows pointing to it: My Plantar Fascia

So, I've been experiencing the fun mixed bag of an acute pain directly under my heel, through the middle of the plantar fascia itself, and a weird "pokey-tingling" sensation near the metatarsal heads.  I have had bouts with this problem over the past 10 years. You are reading this, so you probably have it too, welcome to the club!

Let's talk symptoms: 1-Feels like the middle of your arch is going to rip in half? 2-First step up out of bed in the morning feels like you've stepped on a bamboo shoot trap in the jungle? Sometimes it eases up after the first moments of terror, but many days it linger and aches with no end, "am I right here, Dude?"

Ok, so free advice (and feel free to gimme a $1 for this since good advice is never free), go buy a little gadget called "Foot Rubz", it's about $8-10 and you can use to massage under your PF and it will break up scar tissue and promote circulation to the area in a way that a tennis ball, frozen water bottle, or golf ball are simply just not going to be able to do. No one is paying me to tell you about this product, I'm too lazy to link up with them on this. Aside from that, you can simply get on youtube and find plantar fascia stretches and foot and lower leg muscle strengthening exercises. I'm just reminding you, "the internet knows everything". Orthotics aren't going to make it go away, pills won't do a damn thing, don't be soft! 

You have to work on that thing if you want it to stop hurting. Start thinking of your ability to walk or run without pain in the PF as part of the bigger picture, it will open your eyes to the general state of non-care that you have allowed yourself to slip into. Like your house, your need to maintain all parts of it, and your body needs the same or things breakdown and then life isn't so nice. Our bodies are our home, and if you need to walk or run, you need your Plantar Fascia to be flexible and operating well.

Your welcome, that'll be $1 :)

for the price of a shitty cup of coffee you can say "Thanks for the advice"

Sciatic Nerve Pain or Piriformis Pain

Sciatic Nerve Pain feels like maybe an alien impregnated your upper ass. You know, you wake up one day and think "Did Aliens abduct me, and implant their unborn inside my lower half? This hurts! Shooting pains down your hamstring, into your calf, your arch, etc. Oh, it's terrific when this manages to simultaneously hurt your buttock, hip flexors and groin. Marvelous mess to manage.
Why am I talking about this you wonder? Those who know me well, have heard the story. "I jumped awkwardly over a stream during a trail race, landed hard, felt the shot of pain and have never been the same since". That summarizes it, that happened in 2010. To avoid the pain entirely I am fairly sure that quitting distance running would have been in order. To hell with that!
It is incredible how much pain distance runners are willing to deal with...just so they can bring on more pain by hard racing. The workings of this mind state probably resembles a skipping record (for the kids in the crowd, research 44 and 78rpm records, ya know that old crap before digital download).

 Age telling metaphors aside, I am convinced of the following:
1)Chairs were a bad invention and most of them suck.
2)Our lives have come full circle from hard-easy-way to easy-hard because we made it too easy.
3)I am more than ever considering that training as a survivalist is probably the way to go.*

Managing this is a challenge. Periodic and repeated stimulation of the upper gluteus, hamstring and calf seem to help a bit. Stretching/Yoga also seem to help. It is difficult to tell sometimes if in fact my Piriformis muscle is the culprit of these pains, or if it is only the sciatic nerve that is affected from my the discs in the L4/L5 area
being impinged.
For certain, one of the most effective treatments overall is just digging into the my glutes with my thumb or rolling on a lacrosse ball.
I have managed to crank out some decent mileage despite the pain in recent weeks. But that my friends, will be the topic of another discussion.
 

*Moderately held belief in an impending Zombie Apocalypse.  ;)