As you might guess, my knees are not back to normal after the marathon, even though ice + stretching + ofuro has been doing them well. After the marathon, I was walking like a stiff-legged zombie. The day after the marathon, getting up was painful and I was walking slow, but I could at least try to fake that I was walking normally. And it's kept improving; as of today, I still notice that it's there, but it's not affecting movement, except that going down steps remains a no-no. There's also a pattern of what feels vaguely like pressure building up in a knee, which makes it hurt more, but cracking a knee quickly brings it back to normal.
On Tuesday—when the knees were still pretty stiff—I wondered if I could run ball-to-heel; I heard that running barefoot can help you to avoid runner's knee by changing the biomechanics of how it's all working down there. I figured that if it let you avoid the injury, perhaps it wouldn't aggravate it when you already have it. So on one trip from my office to the bathroom located past the elevators, I did a little jog. It couldn't have been more than 10 meters.
The immediate results confirmed my hypothesis; it didn't hurt to run like that. But the weird thing was that, immediately after my mini-jog, my knees felt so much looser and better. That seemed to defy all explanation, but it was what it was.
And it made me think that, despite my knees not being back 100%, I could give the Vibrams I bought a few weeks ago a spin, and today I did just that.
So on went the Vibrams and out I went.
I decided that today was going to be a ridiculously short run. If I was feeling absolutely superb once out there, I'd maybe run two miles, going in a loop around the few blocks around my apartment so that if I needed to walk home, I would never be far. Otherwise, I'd just do a quick 5-10 minutes and come right back. The idea was that, while not being fully recovered from the marathon and while adjusting my biomechanics to barefoot running, I'd take it real easy but still get some running in (and sate the itch I've had since the marathon to get back out there).
I ended up running a grand total of 6 and a half minutes, with a distance of probably somewhere around a kilometer.
With a ball-to-heel stride, my knees really weren't bothered much more than when walking (although it was a little more, so I didn't want to push it).
But the real limiting factor was the new biomechanics. The first thing I noticed was that, in Vibrams, your calves seem to be doing a lot more, so they get tired quickly. It's clearly going to be a while before I can adjust my calves to running in Vibrams. Beyond that, I was noticing tiredness in places I'm not used to feeling it. That mainly means slightly different parts of the leg muscles than I'm used to, but it was clear that my leg muscles generally are also going to take some adjustment before I can even think about getting my distance and speed up in Vibrams.
Another thing I'm slightly concerned about is that the Vibrams I have might be a little too small. While my big toe and my two outer toes just fit, the two middle toes seem a little crammed. I didn't really notice it when I was running though, so maybe the guy in the store who helped me pick my size knew what he was doing, despite my mutant hyperextended middle toes.
In any case, given that these appear to not really bother my knees all that much, I'm definitely committed to giving them a go and seeing how they work as I get into better shape.
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