Weekly Wrap: Road to Recovery

Road to Recovery: Physical Therapy for Plantar Fasciitis

It’s been extremely quiet on the blog for the past few months, and I hate it. But it’s hard to blog about running when you’re not able to run. I didn’t run a single mile in July and I hardly ran in May or June, not since the New Jersey Marathon. Thankfully, I’m FINALLY starting physical therapy. I have been trying to recover from plantar fasciitis but my “road to recovery” has had some very strange twists and turns.

Physical therapy is what I wanted to do from the jump since it has worked well for me in the past, but my doctors had other ideas. I went to a podiatrist referred by my primary care, and she was NOT helpful. Even though I have PF in both feet, she only gave me one night splint and told me to rotate every other night. She told me to get Orange Superfeet insoles which were not only $55 but way too firm and painful on my heels. I did the stretches they gave me and iced my heels accordingly…but after a month, it was clear that my condition wasn’t improving. And again, I didn’t run a single mile! Beyond frustrating.

When I had my follow-up appointment with the primary care doctor a couple of weeks ago, he was appalled that I was only given one night splint. Basically, I could never recover because I wasn’t giving the heels enough time to heal in a consistent way since I switched the splint every night. They still didn’t seem to really know how to treat me though, saying that I should convert to more stability running shoes, and kept suggesting various shots and “wave” technologies…but I FINALLY got cleared for physical therapy, and I knew exactly where to go – the same place that treated me for plantar fasciitis and my stress fracture 5 years ago!

Last Thursday was my physical therapy appointment with Kim, and it was very eye-opening. Even though I know about the “kinetic chain”, I didn’t realize that I had so many other issues that would lead to my heel pain. Some of her observations were:

My toe flexibility is very limited – I’m at about 50% where I sould be

My left hip gets tight to the point that there is a leg discrepancy

My feet are pretty flat and I tend to overpronate (ankles roll in)

Since I wear neutral running shoes, custom insoles would probably work best for me, but they’re around $500 a pair…

I definitely have a lot of imbalances and I’m looking forward to getting to the root of things and finally getting healed. I’m grateful to be able to have 60 free visits with my insurance so I will be making the most of it! I just wish this all could have started sooner, but I can’t change the past.

Plan Moving Forward

So what’s the plan? Physical therapy with Kim at least 2 days a week, preferably 3 days a week. And I WILL do my exercises between sessions twice a day as prescribed. Every week I will be using the Weekly Wrap to keep myself accountable, I’m really looking forward to being back! I just ordered a new Believe Training Journal so that I can write everything down and monitor my progress. I miss running so much and have felt out of sync ever since I’ve been on this long hiatus, but I can bike, use machines at the gym, and work the upper body and core. It’s so easy for me to just fall completely off the wagon because being injured is so depressing, but sometimes I need to take my own advice:

Wish me luck! Thanks to you all for your support thus far!

Family Vacation in the Bahamas

The highlight of this past week was an AMAZING vacation in Eleuthera, the Bahamas to celebrate my aunt’s 50th birthday! We had about 13 of us attend and let me tell you…the place that we were staying was breathtaking! If you’ve ever seen Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too, we stayed in the house in that movie! I was in the same place as Janet Jackson!!

There were so many highlights to the trip that it’s hard to list them all. The island tour took us to some amazing spots with huge cliffs and we got to see where Lenny Kravitz has a spot, lol. The pool was amazing and never too cold, the beach was just steps away and the Atlantic had so many fish swimming in it! We had dinner prepared by a chef the first night which was DELICIOUS – actually, we never had a bad meal the entire time we were there! And we had a bonfire on the beach with a live band. It was a really great time!

So many jokes, shots, dances, and varieties of “punch”….such a blast! And more than anything, it was a relaxing getaway and it felt good to be off the grid, though I did pop on the Wifi about once or twice a day! I’m so glad that I made the trip and I know that both my aunts were happy that my sister and I were there. We’ll have to do it again!