Forums >Health and Nutrition>Foot Numbness after 40 min of running
I used to run 50-60 mile weeks for about 5 years with no significant injuries, took 3 years off with hardly ever running consistently, and tried to get back into it about 2 years ago. The only problem Im facing with training is a foot numbness that will start on the bottom of the foot and if I keep running on it it will make its way to the lower calf. It will start after about 40-50 mins of running. If I do 35 mins of running there is no sign of the problem. Its not the shoe laces/swelling and I had a PT try to find if there was a pinched nerve but nothing promising. I feel like it might be connected to a tight muscle? On 90 min runs I have to stretch about halfway, the numbness goes away if I sit down and stretch my glutes and the rest of my muscles and wont come back for the remainder of the run. I tried the other day to stretch only my calves and/or my glutes but the numbness will come back near the end of the second half of the run. Any experience or known issues as to why this may happen. The numbness isnt localized in just my toes but across most of my foot. Any thoughts? Or idea of a muscle that may be really tight and causing these issues but hard to stretch?
Thanks
I have the same problem. It starts after about 35-40 minutes, but it also disappears after another 20-30 minutes. In my case, it’s excessive body weight. Once I’m over 73-74 kg, I can actually count on getting this numbness, usually in my right foot. It disappears on longer gentle uphill and downhill stretches and then won’t come back for the run. At first, I thought it must have been something to do with the shoes, but after some testing, I am quite sure it’s my body weight. Whenever I get under 73 kg, this does not happen.
I have had this happen to me a couple of times over the past two years. One thing that I have done to counteract this is stretching my calves and roll them out well after each run or workout. Another thing that I did a lot to counteract this foot numbness is rolling out my plantar fascia with a tennis or lacrosse ball. These two things helped me get rid of foot numbness while I kept training as hard as I wanted to.
Thanks George for the reply however I dont think weight is the problem in my case. Also Miller, I recently got a foam roller and lacrosse ball to do what you mentioned. I hope that solves it, it would be crazy if they are that tight and are causing numbness but I guess its more pinching a nerve than cutting blood flow in that case?
I have a similar issue that appears "randomly". I am 99% sure that it is a combination of tight Soleus and tight plantar. Rolling calf and using a rubz ball delays repeat episodes. Of course my 99% sure is based on no actual medical advice, so your mileage may vary!