Posterior tibial tendinitis. I never knew where my posterior tibial tendon was before this summer. I didn't even know how to spell tendinitis (tendonitis makes more sense to me). Now I know all this and more when it comes to this stubborn injury.
For those lucky souls who don't know their posterior tib from their ischial tuberosity let me sum it up by saying that the posterior tib is a tendon that attaches to your foot at the high point of your arch. When it gets aggravated and inflamed it hurts like hell to put weight on the foot.
I pissed off my posterior tib in February at the Surf City Half Marathon. It was a cold, rainy day that must have tightened up the tendon when it needed to me relaxed. It didn't act up again until late March when I was running my last pre-London Marathon workout, a 18 mile fast progression run. The workout was smoking fast (1:31 and under control) but the foot hurt on the cool down. The pain was very mild throughout April, but flared up for good in May at the 5th3rd River Bank 25k (yes that's the full name of the race, look it up).
Since then I've taken a one week break from training, followed by three (yes three) two week breaks. Each time I think I've done enough to beat the injury only to have it flare up again. As the summer wore on I've also learned quite a bit about how to properly rehab the injury. Those rehab exercises give me hope that I'm making real progress toward a cure. This week I'm running easy every morning and doing my exercises in the afternoon. The entire afternoon routine take anywhere from 2-4 hours. I've been following some version of this routine for two months now, constantly refining the exercise mix to add what seems to be working best. I'll post the details of the workout soon.
