Posts Tagged ‘ice’

Ice Ice Baby (and Insoles)

You may have noticed a shortage of blog posts about my running recently, and the explanation is simple: It isn’t funny. I haven’t had a relapse, and I’m running 8-10 miles a week, but I’m not 100%. I keep toying with the idea of visiting the sports medicine clinic, but I’m not having any trouble walking, my insurance won’t cover an MRI just for fun, and there’s a six-week lag between asking for an appointment and getting one. So I’m treating myself, and you know what they say about that.

Perhaps my chronic peroneal tendonitis has traveled to the top of my foot. Or maybe I have ankle synovitis. Or sinus tarsi syndrome. (I know, it sounds like a line from Star Trek: “Who is the alien guy with the tentacles?” “He’s the ambassador from Sinus Tarvi.”) Does it really matter? The treatment regimen is always the same: RICE. So I go out and do my 2.4 mile loop every other day, come back inside and use more ice than a bartender mixing a $1 margarita. It’s working great and cutting down on my Advil bills.

I was also up around 400 miles on my shoes, so I headed down to Fleet Feet for a pair of Asics Gel Evolution 5s. I have medium arches but I am an Olympic level over-pronator. Really. If I pronated more, I’d run sideways. So not only do I need a motion control shoe, but an insole that keeps me from overpronating inside the shoe. I chose the Superfeet greens. I’ve run in this set-up twice this week and so far, so good.

I’m still running at a decent clip, but I have to come to grips with the possibility that I might never get back to the 57-mile-weeks necessary for me to run another marathon. It might be “bust” for my “BQ or Bust” but I’ll still be a happy runner.

The Miracle Cure

Runners can entertain each other for hours talking about the symptoms and effects of various leg injuries and ailments. Useful treatments, however, tend to amount to one thing: RICE.

For the newbies out there, RICE stands for Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation. It’s my experience that relatively few injuries require compression and elevation, so I made up my own acronym: AIR, which stands for Anti-inflammatories, Ice and Rest, usually in that order. I don’t have much hope it will catch on, or I would put one of those copyright or trademark thingies next to it.

A check of the Web shows an amazing number of ailments that are supposed to be treated with AIR: stress fractures, shin splints, compartment syndrome, hamstring tears, patellafemoral syndrome, and my favorite, tendonitis.

I developed peroneal tendonitis last December, recognizing the symptoms rather early on. A little research and I learned it was slow to heal, probably taking six weeks to disappear.

OK, after six weeks I still had some soreness and not much push off my left leg. Time for a doctor, right? Aha, here’s where the miracle cure comes in. I don’t have to tell you how long it takes to get an appointment these days. So, in the meantime, you wait and rest.

And guess what? By the time you see the doctor, you’re cured! I kept my appointment in order to rule out any complicating condition, but after having my foot poked, prodded, and stretched, the diagnosis was in: I had peroneal tendonitis! I knew I should have gone to medical school.

I received a nice handout about the condition, including a series of stretching exercises and the advice to use AIR on it. (OK, it didn’t say AIR, but it takes time to make your acronym buzz-worthy.) It also says you can use an ankle brace, which, strangely enough, I was already using!

I’m self-employed so I can’t fob the cost of this priceless knowledge onto my boss. I can hardly wait for the bill to come in.

But now that I’ve written about it, it’s a business expense, right?

Right?