I am looking for some feedback about whether anyone can confirm my hypothesis, that alot of Achilles pain is not due to tearing but bunching up of collagen fibres and therefore Achilles pain can be resolved very quickly. Any personal experience of rapid recovery from Achilles issues would be very helpful.
Here is some of my history and why I hope I can be back running at full power soon:
I recently started having Achilles issues when I wore a higher heeled shoe. I run in racing flats (0mm drop) for all my mileage but I happened to switch to a shoe with 4mm lift and the next day the Achilles felt like it was cramping and then I couldn't run the next day without pain.
The reason that a change of 4mm in my shoes caused me a problem is that I was already trained 100miles/week with some fast 10 milers and lots of hill running as well. Foot-fall has to be perfect to avoid injury when training at a very high level.
I won't train with pain so after a few days in the pool today I slowly started walking, then running at 20min/mile and after 40min I was able to drop the pace to 9min/mile and then 6:50/mile at about 50min into the run. No pain.
I ran barefoot on the treadmill for this run with a hitch in my step (permanant dorsiflexion) until 50min in I could start to plantar-flex with no Achilles pain.
So, my hope is that my Achilles Pain is due to bunching up of the collagen fibres in the Achilles and not an actual 'injury' or tear of the fibres. It might explain how I could slowly loosen off the Achilles over 40min to be able to run pain free.
I'll post back later with my recovery progression.