Feet Accessories Part 1

Unfortunately, though like many runners, I fall into the special needs category when it comes to my feet.  I have bunions thanks to my loving grandmother, as they are genetic, therefore I have very special feet.  I first noticed my bunions when I was in 6th grade at a lock-in. My friend asked what was wrong with my feet, I had no idea there was anything wrong with them!  Blew my mind.


Obviously your feet are pretty important when it comes to running.  So I recently visited my podiatrist to have him check me out, give me the go ahead to keep running, and see if I needed any surgery.  Luckily my doctor isn't one to slice open his patients!  He said that the decision was completely up to me and that I should think long and hard about it.  While I would love to not be in pain and have to stop running to take care of my toe, I'd rather not be out of commission for almost a year which is how long it'd take to recover after back to back surgeries.

While I was at his office, I also wanted the doctor to make sure that some inserts that I purchased at the Disney Princess expo were a good fit for me.  Turns out they are great!  Which was what I was hoping expecting to hear (The inserts certainly weren't cheap, so I was hoping I made a good purchase).   

During the expo, Megan and I were walking around and found a booth by ALINE, a company that claims to make "The World's Most Advanced Insole", which of course I was skeptical of, but they offered to fit me for free, so I thought I'd try it out.

The man fitting me had me stand on a platform and place my feet in front of 2 lasers.  The purpose of the lasers were to show how you stood, and I had no idea, but I stand bow legged. Good to know, I guess. They then turned off the lasers, gave me a trial pair of inserts in my size to stand on and flipped the switch, my legs were no longer bowed and I was standing straight. My ankles were directly below my knees and my knees were directly below my hips!  They did have to add an extra boost to the one side over the other to get my correctly aligned.  




Now I know you aren't supposed to wear something you've never run in for a race, but these inserts were wonderful! (Thank goodness.  No one wants to chuck expensive gear during a race because it's causing pain.)  I wore them during the race and had no shin splints or any other pains, you know, besides being exhausted after running 13.1 miles.  

I highly recommend visiting a podiatrist  if you're experiencing any foot pain while you run, it's important to get it correctly or at least addresses before it results in an injury.


~Cassi