Heel! My Heel needs to Heal

"The term “Achilles heel” has come to mean a person’s principle weakness (Wiki)"; I am experiencing that weakness now.

The Achilles tendon connects the calf muscles to the heel bone. When you put your thumb and fore finger on mine you feel it creak like a hinge that needs some WD-40 as I point and flex my foot.

So as it turns out, you can get injured whether or not you wear shoes. I wore my shoes and experienced knee pains and blisters, took them off and now the knees feel great but I have tendonitis. This is my own fault though, I should have trained.

You see my calf muscles are pumping all day long as I hike, up and down mountains, across rivers and through the mud, and without adequate stretching (which I have failed to do), the muscle can become tight causing the Achilles tendon to be over-stretched and experience more work as my heels continue to pound out miles. As this cycle of tightening and pounding is continued, the tendon becomes less flexible and inflamed and can snap just like an overstretched rubber band.

The webpage I’m reading now, http://www.time-to-run.com/injuries/thebig5/achilles.htm, suggests that I stop, drop, put my leg up and roll the knotted tissue, apply ice, take an anti-inflammatory, avoid weight-bearing activities, stretch and swim.

In other words I cannot hike until this clears up.

So for the next week or two or three, or however long it takes for my heel to heal I will get you up to speed as to what I have experienced on the trail thus far. Then we can hit the trail together, on the same page.

My heart is heavy as I miss the trail life. I had to say goodbye to people that I started to connect with, the pure air, the cool mud on my bare feet, the weight of my pack on my shoulders reminding me that my body was getting hard and toned, and to my spirit which sits quietly in the lean-too where it refused to follow me. 

This greyhound bus is taking me back to the smog and the fog of the civilian life of cement. It’s hard to describe what I have experienced on the trail so far, but it’s an experience that makes you not miss your life at home. As I look out the window and see the cars pass by, the billboards and concrete, I see the simplicity of my life slipping away and I feel a hole in my chest that throbs.

The diesel engines, the din of the tires spinning, the trees become a streak of paint from a brush and an absent stroke. People in their individual cabs, tuned out by the radio, the traffic, the schedules, go, go, go! So quickly we get from point A to point B but do we really ever get to know where we are going, or are we just going through the motions?