Haglund's Deformity

After several weeks of non-running due to heel pain, I finally sat down with the iPad a couple of nights ago to see what I could find on what I was experiencing. I was starting to think something was wrong with my Achilles tendon, and that would be bad news indeed. I found information that matched my pain almost exactly. Apparently I share a condition with women who frequently wear high-heeled shoes, a correlation my friends seem to enjoy. It's called Haglund's Deformity, but the common name is 'pump bump,' although I found one place that said in males it's referred to by the former name and the latter is employed for women. And just for the record, I don't wear women's shoes of any kind. I do wear dress shoes almost every day at work, and it seems the cumulative effect of the rigid backs of those leather shoes has caused my discomfort. The constant rubbing and pressure of enclosed heels like this against the area where the Achilles tendon attaches to the bone of the foot causes sacs of some evil kind to form, and also causes the bone to grow in a direction it shouldn't. The pain only occurs when wearing shoes with enclosed heels, and that's exactly what happens to me.

One cure is surgery, of course, an option I don't like. Another is to apply ice several times a day, and I can do that. Also, and this is the part that sealed my self-diagnosis, a good option is to place cushioning between the painful area and the inside of the shoe. I did this yesterday and didn't feel any pain at all. This would also explain why I experienced some relief a couple of weeks ago when I put heel inserts in my shoes. The affected area was for a time above the top of the shoe, but it seems that was only temporary and there's more of that part of my foot open to irritation than the original spot. My right foot is the only one affected, still, so I'm not sure yet if I should take any precautionary measures for the other foot or not. I wonder if it being localized on the right side is due to stride or some other variant.

Due to the twelve inches of snow we received this week, I was forced once again to run on the treadmill this morning. After the blisters and irritation I had last week, it was nice to get back to a run that was mostly pain free. I had a big padded bandage on my right heel to ease the pain, and for the most part it worked. Pain was there, but it was dull and didn't keep me from running as before. I ran 6 miles, and I felt great. It's so nice to know what the problem is and that there are ways I can mitigate the pain and keep running. I have goals, you know. I was starting to feel like I was laid up and uncertain about my fitness, and battling a mild head cold was causing me to start missing the exercise even more. If you'd told me I would run so little in January I would have thought you were crazy. I'm looking for February to be a lot better.