Back in late September, I was running the most miles I'd ever been running.  I'd built it up pretty regularly over the summer towards a half-marathon.  I was trying to build to a marathon in December.  I had been throwing a little bit of barefoot into the middle of my runs, doing it by time instead of mileage (not reflected in my log, b/c I was busy and didn't feel like logging a bunch of little parts into my running log).  I had been doing some barefoot walking too.

Anyway, after one such stretch of barefoot, I felt what I thought was a pebble or knot under the joint where my pinky toe connects to the middle foot (meta-tarsal?).  It wasn't too bad, just kind of weird.  I put my shoes back on after running about 5:00 barefoot and did the rest of my long run that day (this was my routine.  add some barefoot into the middle of another run during the week. not always the long run).  Anyway, nothing bad that day, but I took a couple of days off, and then went out for a couple of runs the next week.  Went out for my long run the next weekend and 5 miles into my run, the pain got worse and worse and I had to walk (limp) home.  This was back at the end of September.

I tried running a little here and there, never too long, but eventually started feeling better in December, but I didn't want to push it, and the weather was crap anyway.  Anyway, I've brought my weekly mileage up to the high teens and am going to keep it there for a little while.  In the meantime, I thought I might try to put some barefoot back into it but I'm trying to find the confidence for it.  

I think that my injury could have also come from not taking enough time to recover from the half-marathon race.  It was a tough race and I never really took much time to recover for it.  Secondly, I've started to notice that my left foot tends to flop a little bit more than my right.  Over the last year, my two injuries from running have been on the left side.  Once it was a knee - not a stress fracture but something, and the other was the foot.  

Any thoughts?

In my limited experience at BF I have discovered that I occasionally bruise my feet, sometimes I never even feel what caused it, and it takes quite a while for the pain to go away.  I had one spot like that in close to the same area that bothered me for a month.  Sometimes when I ran with shoes it would hurt also.  I don't think it's anything to worry about.  Sounds like you had a good system going.  Get back on the horse!

I would also guess a deep bruise.  Or a minor sprain inside the foot.  In my first month of running in FiveFingers I overdid it and experienced something pretty similar.  I hit a weirdly angled curb badly and had that weird feeling.  Not immediately painful, just kinda gross like something moved that shouldn't have.  Afterward it definitely started to hurt.

 

I had to just wait until it felt better before starting again.  It took a few weeks.