nothing to lose

My plantar has not responded to anything I've done over the last 7 months so I've decided to drastically change what I'm doing to fix it.

Misty had a conversation during her Saturday morning run with a longtime local trail runner about my ongoing plantar issue.  He suggested that my feet were weak.  He said he fixed his plantar years ago by running in Vibram Five Finger shoes for a while.  He said that by running in these for a while he was able to strengthen his arches/feet and his plantar issue went away.

After Misty related this to me I've done some thinking about my shoe history.   Up until last August I had at least 3 straight pairs of the very padded Hoka brand shoes.  I had been having persistent trouble with my neuroma/ metatarsalgia so I bought a pair of Altra Lone Peaks.  I'd had some success Altra's in the past but went to the Hoka's because I felt like I needed more cushioning.  Altra's are sort of the anti Hoka, zero drop with moderate cushioning.  Sam and I had a 10 mile run planned in our neighborhood that Saturday morning.  I wore the Altra's and later that day as I'm sitting in my recliner I felt some pain/ tenderness in the arch of my right foot.  Well, from that day forward I haven't been able to totally get rid of the plantar problem.

While I was on the road to Arkansas and back this weekend I've had plenty of time to think about all this.   During the year and a half of wearing the Hoka's my feet basically had a break from any hard work and were weakened.  It only took a single day of less padded flat shoes to expose that weakness and that's where I am now.

The plan going forward is to go barefoot in the house, wear either my cowboy boots or Van's sneakers for everyday wear but continue wearing the Hoka's while running.   I feel like I can strengthen my feet with some exercises, going barefoot at home and the minimal daily footwear.

The way I'm looking at it is that nothing else has worked so far, I'm not running anyway, I may as well try something drastic.  At this point I have nothing to lose.....