Sensitive Achilles

Go hardcore and do calf raises or calf press. 30 Minutes at a time.

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Go back to your old running shoes for the next 10 days.

Wear heel-less shoes as much of the time as possible between now and your race day. Buy yourself a pair of Crocs. Seriously.

Use heat rather than ice to get the mobility back and the Achilles warm before running.

Apply heat to it before you do anything with it. Get it real warmed up. Ease into eccentric drops. I've had almost overnight relief from thus. Do hamstring and calf stretches. But only after your warm up your achillies with heat. Do some basic hip mobility stuff. Look up Jay Johnson stuff. Ease into it. Doing a little will help and shouldnt mess up your taper. Self message helps to. Don't be crazy. Dont sit too much. It will tighten up.

Above all, don't be afraid to DNF or DNS. You could hurt yourself and be doing PT for the next year. I've seen people do this. Being a life long runner is like running a marathon. Gotta be steady. Pros drop all the time - cuz their paycheck depends on it. Think about that if you are powering through this.

Trev84 wrote:

... I recently started using new shoes... (have only worn them for 2 short runs- problem developed the day after the second run).

This seems logical. You now have two problems. 1) How to prevent the problem from getting worse/recurring and 2) How to rehab from your current injury.

I would put on the offending shoe and flex your foot in the various motions you would use while running and see if you can figure out specifically why these shoes are affecting your Achilles. Then, you could try to fix it with orthotics, heel lifts, lower inserts, etc.

The best approach would be to stop running in these shoes and use your old shoes. See if you can find the older model online. And return your new shoes if you can.

I had a similar issue earlier this year following a very hilly off-road race wearing pretty much zero-drop Inov-8s (which I wasn't used to).

I had a course of IMS and did lots of calf raises etc but, what really helped, almost miraculously in fact, was ICE. I concluded that I'd actually injured/irritated the small bursa/sac that sits behind the Achilles, as opposed to the Achilles itself.

This was an injury that threatened my forthcoming Amsterdam marathon, but frequent icing has essentially made it go away. All the best.

Thanks- I am building up to Amsterdam as well good luck!

Gonna revert back to my old shoes and see how heat/ice, stretches etc help it. Physio said he saw nothing to concern him so have fingers crossed it will be ok.

RobG wrote:

I had a course of IMS and did lots of calf raises etc but, what really helped, almost miraculously in fact, was ICE. I concluded that I'd actually injured/irritated the small bursa/sac that sits behind the Achilles, as opposed to the Achilles itself.

Different issues seem to respond differently to heat or ice. "achillies pain" is so vague it's hard to know what you really need. You need to experiment sometimes.

Achilles was always so sensitive, sulking and refusing to do anything at all after his little buddy Patroclus was rubbed out.

Anyway, on to your problem. I have had my struggles with the AT...I think luckily in your case this is probably tendinitis, instead of tendinosis. I would take 2 days off, and then switch back to the shoes that brung ya. Tendinosis for me has taken much longer to recover from. Usually tendinitis will clear in 2 days of rest for me, not 1. But I would also add from experience, running on an injured AT will only make it worse and prolong the injury. You should really take rest until you can run pain and limp free.