Although I didn’t know exactly what affliction I had back in July of Plague Year One (2020), I knew something was up when my left foot started to hurt for seemingly no reason. Slowly, it improved and I began running again, then in December the soreness came back, but significantly worse. I actually didn’t even walk (for exercise) for awhile, which leads to today…
My doctor diagnosed me with plantar fasciitis and this seems like a gimme, as my symptoms matched exactly. I began doing some stretching exercises and just recently began walking for exercise again. Today I decided to do a treadmill workout for the first time since October 25–yes, almost four months ago.
The results were…not bad! I was a bit slow, as expected, but I also deliberately set the pace lower, keeping it at 6:00/km for the first 18 minutes or so and nudging it up to 6:20/km for the last 12 minutes.
The exercise went like this:
- Starting out and feels OK
- Left foot feels a tiny bit sore–will it get worse?
- Starting to actually sweat, like this is real exercise
- Picking up the pace, in the zone, everything else forgotten
Stats (previous walk in brackets, based on 6.5 speed). The standout one is probably how much higher the BPM, vividly illustrating how out of shape I am (well, I’m in some kind of shape, that shape happens to be mostly round):
Pace: 10:47/km (9:29 km/h) Time: 30:33 (30:04) Distance: 2.83 km (3.17 km) Calories burned: 301 (280) BPM: 146 (133)