Backing off the run a little

I think I might be having a little plantar fasciitis flare up in my left foot and I'm less than thrilled about it. This is the first time I've ever had this happen so it really took me by surprise. My heel started bothering me last week and I just continued to run through it. I thought I was slamming it on the ground too hard or something because of where the pain was located. I tried to be very cautious to be up on my forefoot more, but this only aggravated my heel even more. After some researching on the internet, I think it's got to be plantar fasciitis... And now that I've diagnosed myself, I need a treatment plan. I am just starting to up my training hours and distances so I don't want to take time off, so I'm going to swap out all of my runs this week for rides. As long as I get my legs turning over, I shouldn't lose too much ground. I'll also ice, stretch and take some anti-inflammatories to get things feeling better. If this works, I'll still try and do my long and slow run next Sunday - it's only 75 minutes, I think. I'm also going to ease myself into more running intervals. I think by jumping back into intervals with the same intensity that I was doing them months earlier (during marathon training) might have been the cause of this flare up. I first started feeling the pain right after I did some pretty fast 1200's a couple Thursdays ago.

So this week will be big on the swim/bike - light on the run. Maybe I'll try to get a couple strength training sessions in. Ramping up the hours on the trainer should be helpful because I did cut my long ride a little short on Saturday since we had friends coming in from out of town.


A very long swim scheduled tonight (4000yds) - should be a killer!