I have just been through a period of very slow progress due to injuries and weather. Fortunately, I seem to be healing up and the calendar says we should not have too much more bitterly cold weather. I wanted to share my injury experiences and thoughts - and this includes thoughts from my fellow thru hikers. If anyone is experienced in sports medicine or the like, I would invite your comments as to whether what I am writing makes sense.
I think that if you are going out to hike mountains for a relatively short period of time - say a week or less - you can probably hike less than optimally and not bang your body up too bad... come home a little sore perhaps, but then begin to heal. I am now convinced that if you are going to hike for six months or so with 25% suddenly added to your body weight, you have to develop a technique to minimize the chance of injury. I developed a pain behind my left knee just before meeting Anne and the Reichert's at Fontana Dam Village. By the time I met Anne the next time - in Erwin, TN - I had added a shin splint on my right leg that had me hobbling around like a cripple. Fortunately, after some no-to-low mileage days, many anti-inflammatories, wearing a knee brace (left) and putting Tiger Balm and a wrap on my right shin, I seem to be largely healed.
Pac Man, who is a physician's associate from Wisconsin, told me in Fontana Dam that it is important to step with your whole foot on the ground - and not just step on the ball of your foot. Ravencloud, who is an endurance runner out of Los Angeles, told me that it is important to transfer as much of the hiking work as possible to the larger muscles of the upper leg (thighs and glutes) - as opposed to the smaller muscles of the lower leg (calf). As I thought about these things, it seemed to me they both were saying pretty much the same thing. I am trying to be conscious, as I start a step, to lift my knee (using those upper leg muscles) as opposed to pushing off the ball of my foot (using the calf muscles). Of course, you are never using only one or the other set of muscles, but transferring more of the load to the larger muscles helps. In going up a mountain, I lean into the mountain, lifting the one leg and pushing off with the large muscles of the other leg. It also helps to use the hiking poles as much as possible... plant them and help pull your body uphill.
Going downhill is where most of the injuries occur because you are coming down a steep step and potentially jamming your foot with a lot of force. On coming downhill, I generally am now leaning back towards the mountain, taking small steps, and making sure that I have my knee bent as I make impact. Again, it is important to use the hiking poles to reduce impact on the feet and legs as much as possible. When I am going down over anything of a height of one foot or more, I plant both poles out in front first, and put as much weight as possible onto them.
As far as keeping the feet themselves healthy, I have gone through a progression of changes too, and now feel that my feet have hardened up and are blistering less. I started out wearing two pairs of socks. They were thick socks that tended to cause my toes to rub against each other in the toe box. I went to a single sock on each foot, but then there was too much friction as the foot slid in the boot. I have now switched to a thin inner-liner with a regular sock on the exterior. That seems to be working for me. I also put melaleuca (tea tree) oil on and between my toes at night. That seems to not only reduce blistering by reducing friction, but also, if a blister does develop, keeps it from becoming infected. At this point, I feel that I have just about developed my hiker's feet and gait.
No comments:
Post a Comment