Sounds like me. Don't quit. These are typical problems. Keep your chin up soldier.

You have lotsa ailments and they're all in one thread. My hip problem was "fixed" using a foam roller and massage therapy. The ITBS never really goes away. I use a foam roller on that too. Every spring my ITBS recurs. I have to restart my running from scratch, doing 1-2 miles to start. I don't have PF though so you're one up on me.

You can also pick up cycling, the sport for broken runners.

Except don't you wanna heal the PF first before starting on flexible shoes or even barefoot?

I'm not at all keen on the idea of someone starting running and doing 5k's within a couple of months, it seems to me too much too quickly.

Right now, work out your injuries until they are at least manageable. When you get back to running, you can't try to do what you were doing when you left it, you need to scale way back, even if it's only something small like 3, 4 or 5 miles a week. Don't do more running at a time then you feel you can handle, and you'll know by how you feel as you run. Take your time coming back, I spent a year before I ever ran a race.

While you are healing from these injuries, consider water/pool running or ellipticals. These are no impact exercises that mimic running form.

I'm afraid you maybe doing too much too soon. Let your body catch up a little bit and maybe you'll come back stronger.

Stay strong and see you out there!

Any chance you might have some muscle weaknesses or some imbalances and specific strengthening exercises may help? You didn't indicate what caused the issues or whether you've had them diagnosed by someone who knows what they're doing with runners. I had an assortment of issues early on, but a good PT found the causes, gave me some exercises, and switched me from motion control to stability shoes. I also do some barefoot work for foot strengthening, and I can use neutral shoes a little, but the torsion control of my regular shoes really helps me.

I don't buy most of what so-called shoe experts, podietrists, or shoe sales people tell you in this country. It's either they tell you what they are supposed to tell you (to make money) or they don't know Jack (Bauer!). Who diagnosed you that you're an over-pronator? Shoe store clerk at Running Room? Pronation is a natural movement and, while some do pronate in excess, too much of preventing it could cause more problem than necessary. One of the most common problem so-called "motion control shoes" would cause is ITBS because those hard medial post or some rigid plastic piece would put too much stretching on IT band.

Once I was helping out MDRA (Minnesota Distance Running Association) beginning jogging class. We had a guest speaker and, while she was speaking, I was sitting almost directly behind her. I noticed she was wearing a popular "motion control" model with excess build-up of medial post and her legs were almost pushed outward while simply standing. After her talk, I went up to her (I'd never met her before) and asked her if she ever had ITBS problem. Guess what her answer was!

This type of shoes are most likely too ridig and thick and bulky and this more often than not put a lot of pressure on your Plantar Fascia as well because most likely the shoe won't even bend! I call some of these shoes, "a type your wife would buy to wack her husband's head with." They are like a brick! You try to run in ski boots and see how quickly you strain your arch. There's no need for these problems.

A cycle of modern high tech shoes is this: they think more cushion is good so they started making the heel area of the shoes thicker and thicker. Now, the higher off you are from the ground, the less stable you become. So they started putting all those plastic pieces or medial post, etc., to "stablize" this wobbliness. Rigidity of the shoe causes PF; and "Prevention" of pronation causes ITBS. These are what Arthur Lydiard used to call "American shoe diseases."

We don't hear too many cases of PF or ITBS in Japan where people wear shoes like ASICS' new Piranah or adiZERO or Nike Katana--very much like minimalist shoes (though we would soon start to hear more of these problems because now we import more and more conventional American training shoes).

Incidentally, I still get Japanese ASICS racing flats and this is the image of my favorite shoes, ASICS Sortie...oops! I tried to attach the image but I don't know how! ;o)

Nobby, why do you have to take that one-sided attitude? Haven't you heard that a little knowledge can be dangerous? I agreed with SOME of your observations about motion control shoes. But something tells me that you really don't understand overpronation.

http://This message has been edited by RealRunner (edited May-27-2007).