injury

Hi i am training for the dublin marathon(my first) and am plagued with achilles tendinitis should i train on through or rest more,i am putting my heel in ice 3 times a day,i dont want to fall back on my training!please advise!!!!

cheers mate when u say foam roller, could u tell me were i get one,thanks

You are not going to like this. I had achilles problems 3 weeks before the London Marathon in 2005 and decided to run it - big mistake. I have spent £100s on physio, pediatrists etc - 7 years on I still cannot run 1 mile without pain.  Good luck with your decision.

so u think heat is better than ice?going up the walls the weather is fab and cant get out running at all?getting severe withdrawal symptons!!lol

cheers mate it bloody doin my head in not being able to get out on road everyone tells me to REST!!!

Stop running and rest is the advice you give others when they tell you of a similar problem and it it is the advice you ignore when someone else tells it to you.

If you continue running and this week is worse than last week then you have to stop. If you continue running and this week is not as bad as last week then you have a maybe. The big question is the difficut one that if you stopped running altogether for a while would it get better quicker.

I have the same problem at the moment with the achilles having gone 8 weeks back. Not training for a marathon but had this idea that turning 60 this year I would go for 60 races in a year. I am now 37 done and 23 to go with most being 5 k's.

I am continuing racing and doing minimal mileage. Every week I ask myself the question whether I am beter, worse or the same as last week. When it comes back with worse I will drop the plan as I do no want to risk any permanent damage.

There are other years and other challenges.

I had achilles tendonitis last year in my right achilles. I know what you're going through.....the pain can be terrible, shocking first thing in the morning, you think you'll never walk properly again.....let alone run. I sought help through an NHS physio who recommended daily eccentric exercises, calf stretches, towel crawling with the ball of the foot and 20 min icing each evening (bag of frozen peas!):

I've goodled 'eccentric exercises for achilles tendonitis' and there are dozens of articles that will help you. They really do help, bent knee and straight leg, 15 reps per leg twice a day.

The achilles tendonitis came on in April 2011 and pretty much plagued the rest of the year, but it didn't stop me still getting some PBs after a couple of months of physio, I managed a 10K PB in July 2011. Strangely, even when it was at it's worst and I was limping everywhere I still managed to run a bit after huge warmups (consisting of lots of calf stretching and actual eccentric calf drops right before training), I used a cycle machine to keep fitness up too. Many people give up running, I didn't......and that is my recommendation, but we are all different!

It probably took 6 months to get rid of all perception of symptoms.......but no kidding, I don't believe that anyone could have had a worse case of it than me (in terms of pain anyway, my achilles was swollen up to near as dammit an inch wide!) so please don't think that I had a mild case. My physio never said to stop running though, which i was grateful of.

The cause may well have been poor form, I used to be a heel striker and am working hard to banish it from my running.......when I'm exhausted, it can creep back though.

I still do my eccentric exercises everyday. They should be considered vital for anyone who runs whether they have had achilles tendonitis or not.

Thanks Jamie Newton 2...

thanks everone for advice i was at physio last nite and he told me to rest for rest of week ice it every night and he gave me few stretches to do nearly two weeks since i had good run! hopefully light at end of tunnel!

If anyone out there has private medical insurance and not found a meaningful cure through conventional treatment methods (physio etc...), I would recommend a course of Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy.

A friend of mine had achilles tendonitis and was cured within a month with shockwave therapy. I was interested to learn more so my friend pointed me towards www.spectrumtechnologyuk.com. This explains about what shockwave therapy is and where you can have it treated. I'm sure it's not a solution for everyone but could work in some cases.

Good luck!

Good luck with your recovery. I've had it in both achilles.

When you start back running again, try and strike with your midfoot rather than the heel, might be difficult to sort that out in the short term, but in the longer term that may help - I was a predominantly heel striker but now strike more with the midfoot, I feel like I am gliding along now, and probably have less injury-causing vibrations going up my leg. It took a while for me to get used to doing it but it's easier now.

It's also easier to do this if you are strong in the core and have strong leg muscles, glutes etc (maybe you have already though!). I've been doing strength training exercises for almost two months now and it's definitely made a difference -  at the end of my longer runs I'm not flailing around all over the place like I used to, and I keep my form better. I feel like I'm spending less time in contact with the ground, which must be a good thing for avoiding injury.

I remember when I started running again I also increased my cadence, at least for a few weeks - shortening my stride length while maintaining the same sort of running speed. That helps with injury, I believe, and will also make midfoot striking easier.

Eccentric heel drops as well, as recommended above, they definitely helped for me, as did theraband exercises for my ankles/feet, and foam rollering to keep the whole leg loosened up.

Most of the above comes from talking to physiotherapists over the last couple of years.

Thanks for this thread- was going to start one myself. I was in training for my first half marathon at the beginning of the year and despite niggles at back of my leg, I continued training and did the race- not as good as I wanted it to be but at least completed it. However, I continued to run and decided to seek some advice from my chiropracter. She advised me to see a podiatrist which I began to see just before a fun 10K race in June.I said after this, I would stop running until he'd sorted it and not give myself goals to aim for until completely better. Since then, I've not been able to run at all- been using the gym a lot more for strengthing elsewhere. I have also been using orthotics in my trainers. My treatment consisted of acupuncture and ultrasound. I'm not sure if its because I don't use my orthotics when not exercising but I feel that my achilles- which is what i discovered i was being treated for, is not improving. In fact i feel now I can't run at all whereas before I gave up, i was running with some niggly pain. Maybe, if i'd given up completely when pain first started, I would have healed more quickly. I just can't see an end to this problem at the moment and with more events coming up that I wanted to enter ages ago, I'm getting more and more frustrated.Yes I ice it and yes I'm doing regular exercises as advised. I just don't know what else I can do- getting a bit sick of paying privately when the pain hasn't gone. Recently started 2 weekly sports massage- great for 24 hours then it comes back again, just like with the podiatrist treatment. Giving this last treatment a bit of a go, before I say its not successful, as like someone else said, first thing in the morning is agony, but after my first sporst massage, i didn't hobble to the bathroom the next day. Fingers crossed.

Good luck with the recovery Lynn, hopefully the sports massage will work out for you. It took about eight months to shake off my last bout of achilles problems (will be quicker for some people depending on the specifics involved), but it did go in the end, and I now know how to avoid it happening again.

I also walked a lot, around my usual running circuit, and then when I felt able I replaced small sections of the walk with light jogs and short stride lengths, and then changed the ratio of walking to running gradually (you may be doing that already though).

Thanks Ian. Just had another massage-feels so good. The therapist and chiropracter are reviewing ideas as I have recently been getting pain in my IT joint/hip-which could be result of not wearing the orthotics all the time. They say its not good to be going in and out of shoes with support one minute and not the next. This is why my legs and hips are saying-whats going on here? Hopefully I'll get sorted soon. In meantime, as I said, lots of gym work and some walking is good.

Martin, if you decide to give Dublin a miss this time, I am looking for an entry. I know trading race numbers is frowned upon. But would be better than having it going to waste. Let me know.  Cheers  John Kenny. john_kenny@mcafee.com

Now have orthotics that I can put into all my footwear. So over the next 2 weeks looking for big improvements. After that, I will see if swelling has gone down and with the help of ice and massge, I'd really like to do a tiny run to see how things are. Yes, I think by then it'll be 6 months also.I will continue my calf stretches too

You need to attack it from all angles. Treating achilles tendonitis should consist of easing the pain and inflammation with rest, ice and anti-inflammatory meds.

You need to stretch the calf muscles, strengthen them with eccentric heel drops and get some massage and ultrasound.

But most importantly you need to work our why this happened. Usually it is overuse (too much hill work too soon) or biomechanical problems, or a combination of both. Get a lower body gait analysis (not just feet!) to identify any problems and correct with insoles/footwear/strengthening exercises