So glad to hear you've gotten answers and are getting the proper steps to recovery! As for thinking this is due to training? Didn't even cross my mind. I can totally relate how an injury and surgery can cause imbalance problems. Something most people may think about but may not be able to completely stop happening. Something you may not even realize is happening until voila, you're in pain and having problems. Good thing is it's something you can deal with and I see your going the smart route (exactly the same way I'd go about it). Good luck and hope to see you on the roads ASAP! MTA: VERY COOL about your PT!!! Guys like that are hard to find ( got lucky myself )

Hey Mike and Pam and Alan and anyone else who has read and replied here... I just wanted to say thanks!

Hey Mike and Pam and Alan and anyone else who has read and replied here... I just wanted to say thanks!

Anytime hun! YW

that's a big bummer bob. Hang in there. Sending all positive thoughts and energy your way for speedy recovery.

I am soooooooooo sorry to hear this!! My heart ache's for you right now cause I know how I would be if the tables we're turned! Will be keeping you in thoughts hun! Keep us posted PLEASE!!

Thanks for the support, guys! It means a lot to me. The initial shock of hearing that you are pretty messed up just gets to you. Pieces of a puzzle.... Ok, so how did all this happen? It's pretty fascinating actually. And it's pretty cool how Vinny and his associates put the pieces together. If you looked at me visually, two things you would notice right off the bat are two different sized quad muscles, with the left being smaller. Also, you would notice a big ugly black toenail on my left big toe. Let's go back to the left knee surgery the beginning of this year. Once I started running and biking again, I was favoring that left leg. That lead to muscle weakness in it and caused an imbalance between the right and left legs, especially in the hip flexors. Vinny did a quick manual testing of my muscles ( a more formal one will come later ), and all around my left was weaker than my right. In particular, my hip flexor was only about 50% as strong as the right. So, I'm favoring my left leg. That was no surprise. On to the black toenail. I got that this past April courtesy of the Boston marathon. In all my years of running, I've never had this happen. So why now? Weak left leg probably made me scuff or shuffle that leg during the marathon, constantly jamming my toe. It turns black and becomes painful. For weeks, I run favoring that toe by keeping it lifted while I run. This increases the pressure on the balls of my feet, and viola! Stress fracture the end of May. Start running again mid June, favoring my left foot even more by trying to keep the front of it elevated while running to keep pressure off the balls of my feet. This constant dorsiflexion of my foot while running strains the tendons across the top of my foot running up the front lower part of my shin. From all the biking I've done, I have strong shin muscles, so this allows me to get away with running this way for as long as I did. The shin muscles kept my poor tendons braced for the job they were trying to do. If my shin muscles weren't as strong, I probably would've gotten warning signals earlier that something was wrong, but it turns out that they let the tendons strain beyond what normally would've made them hurt. Finally they hit the breaking point. When functioning normally, your tendons in the shin area glide effortlessly back and forth inside of a sheathing. Get them irritated, they swell and start to rub. Usually here is where you get pain and you stop. Mine apparantly were doing that, but I had no indication of it. So they kept rubbing to the point where the sheathing got irritated and inflamed and roughened up, and probably has some tears in it. Imagine your finger is the tendon. Stick it in an electric pencil sharpener. That's what's going on. So any movement of my foot and ankle right now ( i.e. walking) just causes it to rub more, and that in turn causes more inflammation, which in turn causes more restriction, grinding, tearing, and pain. It's a vicious cycle. Vinny my PT said he can't help me much until the inflammation cycle gets broken. So he's sending me back to my orthopedist for a shot to get the inflammation down, and also some sort of a cast to immobilize the foot from any flexion and dorsiflexion. Today I was a guinea pig at PT. Until I can get the cast, one of the associates wanted to try a new taping technique with some sort of special sticky, stretchy elastic tape. The goal was to try to take pressure off that tendon area. So I had to have my leg shaved, and have a carefully designed pattern of taping put on it. I actually find all this stuff pretty cool. It's amazing how having something out of whack can lead to so many other things. Marathon training will definitely bring out the weaknesses in your body. It's also amazing how a good PT or team of PT's can unwravel things. Take care of your body, guys. It's the only one you have.

oh geez... I'm sorry to hear about Vinny's diagnosis Bob I've read about that in horses so I'm familiar with the deal.

They aren't going to shoot me, are they Katie? I've been called a horses a$$ before, so now I guess I have horses feet too! Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by! Take some lessons from me and keep plugging at getting your foot better!