About a month ago, I had arch pain brought on by a sudden change in my work shoes, while simultaneously building mileage too quickly. I didn't feel it while running, but only if I walked in my work shoes for too long. At this time, if my arch hurt, it would also hurt to do the hop test. So, I stopped wearing my work shoes, took a day off, cut my mileage, and started massaging my arches HARD with a golf ball. After this, I could pass the hop test, walk on my toes, and run barefoot with no pain, but my arch felt sore towards the end of runs, and usually felt tender during the day. I kept up with the hard golf ball massages, and followed most PF recovery strategies (icing, stretching and massaging calves and hamstrings, stretching arches, strengthening feet, etc.), but my arch still just felt sore.
After a week or so of this, I took a week off from running, and aquajogged to stay in shape. Also, I got a strassburg sock to wear at night. I realized that my arch soreness might be a result of the hard golf ball massages, so I kept to more gentle massages to just loosen up the bottom of my foot. My arch soreness died down, but the lateral/bottom-lateral side of my foot has become sore/tender. I'm thinking that I may have aggravated this area aquajogging, but that doesn't make too much sense. This pain died down too, though, and I started running again on Saturday.
Since I started running on Saturday, my foot feels 90-95%, but there's still occasional soreness in both my arch and lateral side of foot. To make matters more complicated, I don't have morning pain/soreness in my arch, even without the strassburg sock (it started to hurt other parts of my foot so I ditched it). I can still do the hop test and run barefoot with no pain. Could this be a muscle issue rather than plantar fasciitis, or some sort of nerve issue? I feel like the shotgun diagnosis for bottom of foot pain is PF, but this doesn't really follow along with it...no morning pain, only soreness in the arch, and pain free barefoot running and hop test. It's minor pain/soreness, but I'm worried about it getting worse as my Summer base progresses. Any and all help is appreciated!
For reference, I wear Adidas Sequences and Tempo boosts (new pairs - both were old when initial injury was felt), and have for a year.