My Heel Spur and PF

I've never been the most flexible person, at least in terms of muscular elasticity.  I like to think that I'm extremely flexible in other areas of my life.  Regardless, that inflexibility finally created a situation that necessitated a trip to a doctor.  The result, a nice 'ol heel spur, or calcaneal spur if you want to sound snooty about it.  After getting a fancy real-time x-ray (maybe not really that fancy... the technology, when I thought about it, probably wasn't that complicated considering you hardly ever see anything but digital x-rays these days, and getting a live feed from an x-ray is probably just a matter of leaving the thing on instead of a quick zap), and having the technician move my foot around a bit to the right spot, we finally saw this:

The spur itself is the little hook pointing to the right at the bottom of the heel

And there is was, the root of some really annoying pain at different times during the day.

Technically, the spur itself is not the root of the problem, but an artifact of plantar fasciitis.  The pain is focused on the spur, where the tendon and the bone meet.

I first felt the pain from the spur itself back in September.  Specifically, a day or two before the 25th of September.  Why can I remember that date so accurately?  It's the last time I went for a run, and is logged in my RunKeeper activities.  Thinking I just bruised my heel doing something around the house, maybe jumping onto/off of something in a pair of socks or dress shoes (dress shoes, in my world, are defined by any everyday footwear NOT considered a running sneaker), I decided a bit of rest from running would be the best treatment.  Given I just stunk up the joint a few weeks before at the Pumpkinman, I didn't feel too bad about this decision.  The break from running, not surprisingly, coincided with a break from swimming and cycling as well.  It also coincided with a crazy two month period where TL was recovering from getting tagged on her bike to the tune of 9-ish broken bones.

Anyway, fast forward to the end of November and things were actually getting worse, with the annoying pain becoming something that actually really kind of hurt when I would get up in the morning, among other times.  This symptom, being more bothersome after rest, was the telltale sign that actually triggered me to go to see a doctor.  There wasn't much he could do other than offer more rest, suggest some stretches, and give me a cortisone (I think) shot.

I've a followup appointment scheduled for after the new year, but I'm not sure I'm going to go.  The foot is feeling better these days.  I try to spend some time in the evening rolling my foot over a tennis ball to stretch out my arch, in addition to a bit more focus on stretching the calves and foot area.  I've decided that the new year will be as good a time as any to get back (on/off?) the wagon and start running again.  Although technically I've been doing a warm-down of a mile or so on the treadmill after some quality time on the trainer/stationary bike.  I don't think the 9-10 minute mile really should count as a running workout, though.