120-140K a month, December-April.
Improving times.
No sense of injury.
Through ice, hail, rain and sleet.
And then the 10K on Easter Monday. 546th out of 675. Lots to do, plenty to aim at, but very different from every race I ran at school. There and then, I always finished last.
Hobbly afterwards. Worse the following day. And then a dawning realisation that I’ve got plantar fasciitis again. In the left foot this time, instead of the right. Actually, quite possibly in both. Weak, high arches. Plantar fascia torn – somehow; a rabbit hole? – and weeks or months on the sideliness.
Weeks or months of RICE.
Weeks or months of exercise on a bike. Poor investment of time vs running in terms of minds cleared, calories burnt, well-being gained.
I didn’t exercise much in my first 44 years. As a consequence, while many friends and peers who run are starting to experience wear and tear on their joints, my knees and hips are as fresh as a teenager’s. It’s just the freakingly feak and weeble feet and arches that let me down. Genetic inheritance, eh?
I passed a disappointing and rather perfunctory 17 minutes in the company of some orthotics specialists yesterday, and wasn’t much impressed by their bespokeness, enthusiasm or customer-centricity. Not the solution for me. No clear sense why hand-made orthotics (at £402) would work any better than the generics (£29.99 online) I’ve already got.
It would have been ungentlemanly to miss the Gentlemen of Lewes’ pre-season net at the County Ground, home of Sussex CCC last night. Two hours with proper coaches in a real cricket club. The closest I’ve ever come to being a professional sportsman (i.e. not very). And irony of delightful ironies, our arch rivals Rodmell training in the adjacent two lanes.
As a consequence, my feet are dog sore today – dog sore for the soles, Black Dog sore for the soul. So dog sore that they affect my ability to think about much else. A small problem that will clear up in due course and that will be alleviated by routine painkillers (which I always seem to forget to take and wonder why I hurt).
Enough of the self-pity. Chug, chug, chug with the ibuprofen and paracetamol. But no running for the foreseeable.
firsttimerunner 
I had PF a few years ago. It’s not fun at all. I did a couple of things to get rid of it and they are in no particular order: started taking Bikram Yoga classes, wore a device called the Strasburg sock which stretches your achilles tendon and calf while you sleep and a pair of sandals with deep heel cups and more importantly a deep area for under the ball of my foot. The sandals are made by Superfeet. I can’t say which of the three things I’ve listed was the most important as far as getting rid of PF but it was a lucky combination that worked for me. Good Luck.
Thanks for the reply, support and recommendations. Open to everything and anything!