Tuesday, May 10, 2011

No Heel Issues... Yet

Mt. Rubidoux and I have been friends for a while. I started running Mt. Rubidoux with regularity in March 2010 and for a solid two months was going once or twice a week. Heel issues forced me to scale back on my running in June 2010 and part of that was giving up Mt. Rubidoux. I was going there every once in a while, off and on, nothing with any consistency. I was worried the heel pain would come back.

Lately, however, I've thrown caution to the wind. Since San Francisco is coming up soon (I'll have some more thoughts on San Francisco in another blog post), I kind of have to start running hills again. So lately I've been hitting Mt. Rubidoux hard. I ran five miles there on Monday, four on Friday, six the Monday before that and I went at least twice the week before that.

How's my heel? Well, so far, so good.

I was worried that I would be hobbling around once more, or at the very least feel some discomfort when I wasn't running. But there hasn't been anything out of the ordinary thus far. I'm not going to celebrate too much, though, because this could turn into a problem as it did last year. I wasn't really feeling a whole lot when I first started running hills in 2010 but after a few solid months of pounding, I was feeling it.

I'm going to be more cautious this time, though. Well, that's the plan. I'll try and listen to my body more this time than last year and if I feel the onset of such heel pain, try and ease back a little. But Mt. Rubidoux is intoxicating! That's the only problem, of course. It's always a challenge, always a fun challenge too. I can't think of another 4-mile route, or 5-mile route, or 6-mile route, or 6-plus-mile route around here that is so enjoyable and so challenging.

I'll probably go out there once more this week as Mt Rubidoux won me over a long time ago. Hopefully it's also won over my heel as well.

3 comments:

Annette@(running)In the Right Direction said...

Good luck with the heel...wrote in one of my post...most of it is getting over it in our heads more than anything else.

misszippy said...

I've had two bouts with PF (if that's what you're dealing with?), one in each foot. Today, I am completely pain free and I credit going barefoot as much as possible. It has strengthened my feet and kept the PF at bay.

Lauren said...

So happy to hear the heel is doing okay, hard workouts ARE addictive. That was the hardest thing to deal with during injury, it's hard to get that same "nothing left" feeling from crosstraining!