Feb 9, 2007 12:38 PM
Pain/Shoe question - another one?!
OK, I'm only posting this because it might be a twist on these two topics that have been posted repeatedly! Here goes! I run about 40 miles a week and have some soreness in the calves and knees that's not serious but enough to interrupt sometimes, and it moves around a little. Sometimes it's generalized. Let's say for the purposes of this that it's not a specific injury (yet) just because it moves around, and it comes and goes. Now! I am a neutral to under-pronator. I think this because I can look at the wear on retired shoes and it's along the lateral portion for the whole shoe. I discovered this about 2 years ago after being put in motion control shoes, etc. by various "runners" who work at running shoe stores, and haven't had a major injury since. However, at the same time, I finallly moved to a good mid- to slight forefoot strike and easily hold 180 cadence. I went into a store, again, one of those with "runners" the other day and the runner told me I over pronate. I showed him my worn shoes and asked how that could be be, at which point he shrugged as expected. My question now. I am developing a hypothesis that maybe this chronic lower leg pain IS due to overpronation - after all, one of the "runners" in one of the stores said they could see a slight whipping inward when they watched me. Any help here? Specifically, could it, after all this, be over pronation and I should try a pair of stability shoes? Also specifically, could I have this lateral wear pattern if it's overpronation - to me, that's the one thing I've been hanging on when getting the ****-shoot over versus under pronation advice from so called experts. Ugh. Thanks in advance. The risk of course is that if I am indeed neutral to under pronation and I add a stability shoe, I'm probably looking at a stress fracture before long, which is what I DID get before my switch two years ago. Or maybe my forefoot strike will make it OK - sorry to be so long here - but that's actually a parallel question - perhaps my switch to neutral shoes was mistakenly credited with no more injuries when it was just the footstrike adjustment?