re medial arch#

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:06:59 +0000

So, one of the recurring themes in this blog (and my skating generally, to the point that everyone's probably getting quite sick of hearing about it) is my ankle pain. When I last wrote about it I thought that the neoprene thingies had mostly fixed it - or at least limited it to one lump in four (left foot inside) - but after further skating, this proved not to be the case. Definitely worse on that side than the other, though, so I thought it might be a frame placement thing on the left boot and maybe the other parts were just hurting because I was skating on it in a funny way to minimise left side pain.

I hate frame adjustment. Typically, any attempt to adjust my frames is doomed from the moment I first loosen the bolt: the best outcome I can possibly hope for is that I'l be able to put it back the way I found it and it'll feel no worse than before. Often even I don't manage that: I put it back as it was and it still feels uncomfortable and different. Anyway

Observations made yesterday were (a) when I stand in skates on my left leg and bend the knee, the knee bends inwards instead of straight ahead, whereas my right leg does the more usual thing; (b) actually the same thing happens when I'm not in skates if I stand normally on the left foot. If I wedge something under the right side of the foot so it's angled out a bit, the problem goes away. So at that point I was thinking about the possibility that I have a fallen arch that side - and of course, instantly became acutely self-conscious about how I was walking, which seemed to involve putting that foot flatter on the ground than the other.

Today I see that my unshod footprints after getting out of the shower actually look pretty similar on each side, so I'm not as sure that's a valid self-diagnosis. I'm continuing to be acutely conscious of how I'm walking (so probably not walking normally even for me) but am sort of observing that my toe push is not as strong left as right, so perhaps I have weak plantar flexors on that side (it is possible that something odd happened to my gait about a year and a half ago when an accident[1] left me limping for three weeks and off skating for three months). Which is even better news than the fallen arch if true, as at least I can fix that through exercise.

Yeah yeah, I should stop speculating and find someone who actually knows about this stuff who can look at it and tell me what's actually going on.

fn1. I say it was an accident. Really, it was my own fault. I knocked someone over when failing to heelbrake (the pad was more worn than I'd realised) and she fell and sat on my outstretched FSK-encased foot, resulting in a large lower-leg haematoma where the boot cuff dug into my calf - but fortunately, no injury to the other party. Who said heelbrakes were a safety measure?

[ skating log: not a hell of a lot, for primarily this reason. LFNS Friday, then route check on Saturday, which left me in an obscenely bad mood and almost relieved that the rain all day Sunday made it necessary to cancel the Stroll; nothing since. I hope to be out on Friday whatever transpires with my ankles, as I'm riding the music bike ]