Achilles pain 5 weeks until marathon

1) I don't know if metatarsal pain and achilles pain are normally related. But in your case, there is possibly a correlation given how they both came on. Maybe the inserts brought on a gait change, or maybe something hurting you brought on a gait change and that led to the other issue.

2) Keep going. But take three days off. You won't lose any fitness but you just might spring board any healing to get you over this hump.

For the recovery, start dong eccentric heel drops immediately. 3 sets of 15 reps, both feet, in the morning and in the evening. Take your time on the lowering. You can spend as much as 10-15 seconds on each rep. If you feel some weird sensations in your achilles, that's a good thing.

Start doing some other strength stuff. There is a good chance your hips or quads are weak and led to these injuries. It might be something else, but it doesn't hurt to strengthen your other parts. If you are doing a strength routine, keep it up. If not, I recommend the super simple Lunge Matrix (just google it). Do it before every single run.

Fill a 5 gallon bucket full of ice water and stick your foot in it for 15 mins every day. And like mentioned above, take a few days off. Once you're back into training, if you feel any pain, don't push through it, call it a day and focus on recovering and not making the pain any worse.

Have you checked your shoes? Are they old with minimal support? That could be part of the issue.

The extra miles are probably exacerbating small form issues and putting too much stress on the achilles.

Work on strengthening your hips and glutes. Google a few different exercises and devote 15 minutes a day to it.

You can't run through an achilles injury. And it's not a muscle that "loosens up." It can go numb during a run, during which time you'll just exacerbate the injury.

I assure you, 2 or 3 or 4 days off is not going to matter. Take 2 days fully off. Assess. Repeat if necessary. It isn't going to derail your fitness. But if you don't let your achilles heal, you're not gonna be running anything in 5 weeks.

I tried to run on a sore achilles for almost a year and it finally got to the point I couldnt walk in the mornings and there was no way I could run without a limp.

I started going to physical therapy and he has me doing some intense strength training and also balancing on a bosu ball. I also stand on a slant board 5 plus minutes a day doing straight leg and bent knee calf/achilles stretches.

I dont think an achilles injury is something you can just run through, it will progressively get worse unless you are doing a lot of physical therapy.

Also I tried to wear shoes as little as possible, wore some flip flops that had a high heal that helped take away pressure and also not irritation from shoe rub.

I also wore a strassburg sock at night, although that usually only lasts maybe 2 hours until i cant stand it anymore

Thank you everyone for the responses! All the advice is appreciated. I'm going to take the next 2-3 days off and see how I feel after that. You're all correct that if I don't treat this properly I will not be on the starting line in 5 weeks.

I do hip and glute strengthening only once a week, so definitely something I should incorporate more.

Also, my shoes are only 3 weeks old (I did break them in) and they are the same type of shoe I have been using for 2+ years, so that should not be an issue. Thanks again!

I feel like an idiot, but after rolling for the first time in forever, I realized how tight my calves are. I have been completely neglecting them and realized this is likely the cause of my Achilles issues.

Any recommendations to loosen them up other than foam rolling and heel drops? The tightness and knots are really bad and no joke.

I'm still going to take the 2-3 days off, though. It felt better this morning after heel drops and rolling last night / this morning, but the Achilles more so just feels tight now. Thanks again!

The heel drops will sometimes tighten my calves. I like to do classic lean against the wall calf stretches before and after the drops (if time permits). And usually I'll foam roll in the evenings. I do agree that tight calves can add to the achilles pain, but I also think that is not usually the primary reason you have pain. It just exacerbates it. Oh, and check out hamstring tightness, too. Again, it could help alleviate some of that pull. But for me, it is always my stride and hip strength that brings achilles issues back.

As for other ways to loosen up calves. Try massage. An hour with a sports masseuse could go a long way to breaking things up.

Do eccentric heel drops.

Update: I took 2 days off (Wednesday and Thursday) and ran Friday. It was a little tight, but there was no pain and I got in 8. Saturday morning I saw a PT and he seems to think it's not that serious. He believes with a few weeks of work, the issue will go away. I went for a run later in the day and it was again tight, but not painful. I got in 7 miles.

This morning (Sunday) I went for a run and I noticed before the run my sock felt tighter on one foot (the injured left foot / Achilles) (maybe swelling?). My Achilles didn't seem to hurt, but my ankle did from very early on. The pain was manageable, but more so annoying than anything. I decided to stop at 9 miles and I'm definitely a little defeated.

I'm now planning to take a full week off of running and continue doing the heel drops, icing, compression, etc. The heel drops kill my calves. Is this normal?

And I'm more so worried because everywhere I've read that this type of injury takes weeks / months to go away, but I don't have that time.

My Achilles is now sore after that run. It kind of felt like the pain was shifting throughout the run, to the point I couldn't even really tell what was hurting (the inside of my ankle, outside of my ankle, Achilles, etc.)

The goal for this marathon was to go after a sub 3-hour time, but being on the starting line is more important to me than running through pain to hit a time. It just sucks because I've been working hard for this one.

I assume the only advice is rest at this point, but any other helpful advice would be appreciated.

Also, the PT tested my hips and they were in good shape. My left quad was very tight, as were my toes on my left foot. We did some stretches on those.

I'm also still curious if the inserts screwed up my Achilles. The pain started slightly when I had the inserts in and it's only gotten worse since. There are just so many possible causes, it's hard to determine what caused this all.