Doc On The Run Podcast

If you just got injured, your number one goal is to not lose your running fitness as your running injury heals.    If you were diagnosed with a running injury a while ago, you stopped running and now you’re just getting back to running after taking some time off, in that case your primary goal is to resume running without sustaining another overtraining injury. Especially right when you start runn...

This morning, I was on a call with a recovering runner who signed up for a series of coaching calls to get back to running after a long-standing injury.    This is an elite athlete who had multiple setbacks, and encountered difficulty getting over the hump a number of times.    If you're going to get back your fitness, and if you're going to get back to training as fast as possible, you're going t...

Let's say you have been injured. You've been a good little patient. You waited around, you have done nothing. You have endured a frustrating period of boredom. And you finally started running again. That’s great!   Today's episode came from a webcam call I did with a recovering runner. She has a stress fracture but her foot was good enough to run outside.  The question was  about whether or not an...

Today I was out on a run and I was thinking about treadmills versus running outside. To be fair, I was actually running outside during this run.    It seems like most of the runners who sign up for the Fast Track challenge, or who call me for a second opinion, the majority of them like to run outside.  I have a question  for you.   If you got an overtraining injury like a metatarsal stress fractur...

Let's say you're out on a run and you start getting some aching pain in the ball of the foot. It persists for a while.    It's not really that bad. Your foot is not killing you. But it starts to bother you more and more over the course of a few weeks.    Being proactive, you see a podiatrist. The podiatrist tells you that he thinks you have something called a Morton's neuroma. So he does an x-ray...

Have you ever had black toenails after a long run? Have you ever lost a toenail after a marathon? Have you tried using goopy skin lubricants, or worn  bigger shoes that make you feel like you're wearing clown shoes? If you have, but you're still having problems beating up your toenails in your running shoes when run, I've got a simple solution that may actually help.  Today on the Doc On The Run P...

If you're a runner with plantar fasciitis, you probably have heel pain when you get up and step out of bed.  If that's gone on for months, you tried icing, you've tried stretching, and you've become frustrated, it starts to become pretty easy for your doctor to talk you into surgery.  If you've had plantar fasciitis for a long time and your doctor is trying to convince you need surgery, you should...

If you get aching pain in your ankles when you're running, and it seems to lag and doesn't just go away, you might not have ankle pain at all.  There's a thing that I see often in runners complaining of ankle pain, but when I actually look at the runner's feet, it's a different condition altogether. That condition is something called "sinus tarsi impingement." Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast,...

Plantar plate ligament sprains are a tough injury for runners. Plantar plate tears can cause a lot of pain in the ball of the foot. Unless you treat them correctly, that pain can persist for a long time. As a result plantar plate injuries can be super frustrating. Unfortunately, plantar plate tears are often diagnosed when you get an MRI of the foot. I often get questions from runners asking me wh...

Today's episode comes from a question posted as a YouTube video comment.  That video was explaining how using crutches for a short period of time can help injured runners.  I wasn't talking about months of crutches, not many weeks, but a short period of time to try to accelerate the process of healing over-training injuries. In the comments someone posted and said, "How long would you use crutches...

WARNING: You may not want to listen to this topic while you're eating. I'm going to tell you a story that goes along with dinner.  Believe it or not. One time we went out to a restaurantwith a bunch of friends.  A member of our dinner party took off his shoes and he said, "Hey, what do you think of this?" He was literally showing me warts on the feet right there in the restaurant. Plantar warts ar...

Whenever I speak to a runner who wants to know if they can run with a bone bruise, I get confused. If you were "diagnosed" with a bone bruise, you should be confused, too. A bruise is a very simple thing. You fall down and land on your knee and you get a bruise. You get a bruise because your kneecap crushes the skin against the ground and you get bleeding in the skin that you see as discoloration...

If you have pain at the bottom of the big toe joint, up along the arch, just above the plantar fascia, you may have been told that you have this thing called FHL tenosynovitis. "Tenosynovitis" just means that you have inflammation of the tendon sheath or tube that carries the flexor tendon down to your big toe. It helps you pull your big toe down when you push off while running. When the tendon sh...

It's no secret that I enjoy Ironman triathlons. I did 15 of them, and the last one I did was the Ironman World Championships. That doesn't mean I'm fast. It just means I'm stubborn. But when I was a kid, I was obsessed with Ironman Hawaii and I decided that I was going to do Kona. You never know what good or "bad" things can happen to help you fulfill your dreams.  Long story short, the day before...

If you're a runner you may be wondering what in the world something like "subungual melanoma" has to do with running injuries.  There are a couple of reasons.  Subungual melanoma is commonly mistaken for a bruised toenail. What runner has never had a dark spot under the toenail? Subungual melanoma is actually extremely deadly. You're not necessarily likely to get it, but there is a reason that thi...

If you have pain under the big toe joint, it could be an injury called sesamoiditis. Sesamoid bones are like a pair of tiny little kneecaps under the big toe joint. They are about the size of kidney beans. If irritated enough, sesamoid can develop stress fractures. Any inflammation of the sesamoid bones is called sesamoiditis.  But pain in the sesamoid area can also result from inflammation of the...

One of the worst questions you can ask any doctor is, "when can I run?"    Believe it or not, I get these questions every single day...from total strangers.   They get injured and go to the doctor. The doctor says, "You can't run." Then they will call me and ask, "When can I run?"  Why am I going to give you the magic answer, if I don't even know you? There is a better way. The best questions that...

An interesting runner called me for a second opinion. He had a couple of things going on that created a pretty confusing picture. He had a plantar plate sprains (at least he was told he had plantar plate injuries) because his MRI showed evidence of injuries to the plantar plate ligaments of toes two, three, and four. He also had some nerve type symptoms. But on the bottom of the foot, he also had...

I got a great question from a runner who wanted to start running on an Alter G Treadmill. What she said was: "I've been getting out of the boot. I started running on an Alter G Treadmill, and everything's been going great. I feel good. I feel like a million bucks because I'm finally moving again. Is it okay for me to run every day?"  What if you had a friend, who was not fit at all, who wanted to...

Today's question actually comes from Elizabeth who explained she rolled her ankle, and sustained a fracture of the fibula bone. She wanted to see if she could get some advice. She said, "I'm a 27-year-old female. I twisted my ankle and I was rushed off for x-rays and discovered a spiral displaced fracture of my fibula in my ankle joint. I'm dying to get back on the road and going a bit stir crazy....

One of the worst injuries you can get when you're a runner is a plantar plate sprain. It's a stretching, a straining, a tearing of this tiny little ligament at the ball of the foot called the plantar plate.  Every time I do a second opinion consultation over webcam for a runner with a suspected plantar plate sprain,  I ask them to do one simple thing.  I want to look at the insert in their running...