Friday, January 12, 2007

Now That's a Blister

The pictures speak for themselves. The swelling has gone down, but it puffs back up when I run.










2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a blister, for sure. Ew. And I'm familiar with the horrible sting from pinky blisters when running.

A few questions for you. You've mentioned angle issues that you think are the result of broken leg from your youth, so obviously your strike is probably a bit off -- join the club. Are you wearing running socks (you know, the two layer thick kind)? How old are those socks? Have you carefully examined the type of your running shoe, or better yet, gone to a running shoe store to have them watch your gait to help correctly identify the type of running shoe for your strike? How many miles on your running shoes?

I think you know where I'm heading with this. Sounds like equipment failure, since with an odd strike you have to rely on equipment to compensate. Nothing to be ashamed of, just to be aware. :)

Bull said...

Good questions.

New, but not too new shoes. About 80 miles. I'm careful to break in shoes on shorter runs for 20 or 30 miles before running long in them. They all get retired from running at 300 miles.

I swear by Thorlo running socks and I ran in pretty new ones. Funny thing is, they just don't wear out. They're expensive but worth it and the old ones are much worse than the new ones.

I'm a moderate neutral to underpronator and any kind of stability or motion control puts a lot of stress on the outside of my foot causing pain. So I wear neutral cushioned shoes and they work well.

Here's my analysis. My favorite shoes is the Asics Nimbus. My last pair was version 6. They updated it to version 7 and then again to version 8 since my last purchase. My new pair was a closeout of version 7. They feel tighter in the toe box than version 6 and I'm guessing they changed something in the fit. They came out with the 8 pretty quickly after version 7 so I'm guessing that I'm not the only person who has had a problem.

I'll go to the running store tomorrow to talk to someone and either find a different shoe or perhaps go with a wider shoe since this shoe comes in different widths.

Another possible cause is that the skin hasn't completely healed since I got my first blister on this toe the week before the Dallas marathon when I laced the shoes too tight. Dallas blistered it again. The skin came off over Christmas so the new skin was still probably pretty vulnerable.

The final possible cause is that my gait while running faster puts more pressure on the toe. This has only happened when I'm trying to push hard. This definitely gets me more up onto my toes and changes my foot strike.

Unfortunately, changing my gait probably isn't going to happen. If I sit down with my legs straight out in front of my and my knees both point straight up my right foot angles out about 30 degrees. There's definitely a twist in my lower right leg.

I'll figure something out. This is the first time in my life I've had problems with blisters on my feet.