This is my big, "I feel dumb" post. Best case scenario, I can lay out all of the things that led to my injury in training so that it may save someone else from making the same mistakes. Here's a recap of what I've done this month:
I bought a pair of Vibram Five Finger Bikilas and started running in them. Based on the small amount of research I had done on barefoot running, I started with two-mile runs every other day for the first week. My calves were extremely sore during the first few runs, but near the end of the week I was pretty much recovered by the next run.
I thought the transition was going great, so the following week I stepped it up to 4-mile runs every other day. My feet felt okay, and my muscles seemed to be recovering great after each run. Then came the major mistake. I was out on a Saturday run for my third run that week, planning to run another 4 miles, and I started talking to a guy on the trail. As we ran I knew I was a ways out past my turnaround point but I felt good so I just kept running and talking. When he broke off the trail I saw the mile marker indicating that I was 4 miles out from the trail head. This meant I had another 4 mile return trip that, rather than walking home, I decided to run. Even at the end of that run I felt great. My feet were a bit tender, but overall I felt really good about the run.
My next run came in the third week and I planned to alternate between 4 and 6 mile runs, still taking a rest day in between. I was going to do this for the next two weeks and then start training for a marathon in October, running 5 days per week. On this first 4-mile run I started to develop a pain in my right foot above the pad of my forefoot, where the bones in my feet met my toes. The pain was fairly minor, and also seemed to get better as I ran, so I figured it would be okay to run through it. By the end of my run the pain was hardly noticeable, so I thought I was in the clear. The pain returned as a dull ache when I walked that evening and stuck around until my next 6-mile run two days later. Again, the pain was present for about the first 1-2 miles of my run and then subsided. After the run, when the pain returned worse than before, I figured I should take a few days rest before running again.
At this point I started researching injuries associated with barefoot running and realized I had progressed through mileage way too fast in my transition to barefoot running. Based on what I read I decided to not run until the pain was gone. I waited a full week without running. The pain was actually still present, but seemed a bit better after the week of rest, so I thought I'd take a short 2-mile test run in shoes. This was horrible! The pain flared up far worse than before and I figured I'd be done running for a long time due to my over zealousness to get back into running.
Needless to say, I'm not currently running at all. I made an appointment with a podiatrist next Tuesday to make sure I haven't done anything serious. In the meantime I'm just trying to do whatever feels best on my foot. Mostly RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevate). All four seem to help tremendously. I'm actually really surprised that wrapping my forefoot with an elastic wrap and wearing my old running shoes almost completely alleviates the pain even when walking. I'll keep this up until Tuesday when I'll have a better idea of how long I'll need to wait to run again.
Happy running (to everyone still running)! Hopefully I won't be out of action too long.
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