Achilles Tendonitis

Last week going into this week I was rather stupid and bumped up my running mileage too fast.  I ran 27 miles in four consecutive days starting Tuesday, with 12 of those miles occurring on Friday (in 2-3 runs that day), and then only taking one day off before running 6 more miles on Sunday. This past Monday I didn’t run, but that evening my right Achilles tendon started to hurt a bit.  I tried to ignore it and went for a 4.75 mile run Tuesday evening hoping that the pain would go away.  Although that may sound stupid, a few weeks ago (around the PT test time) my right hip was hurting when I walked/ran, but after a few days of it hurting I decided to run and push through the pain.  Mid-run the pain went away and hasn’t returned since.  I was hoping that would occur with the pain in my Achilles tendon.  No such luck.  Yesterday it still hurt when I walked and so I went to the PX and bought some bengay and some cushy insoles for my boots.  I also started taking some ibuprofen and the pain eased up a bit in the afternoon.  Last night I had planned to run approximately 8 miles, broken up into 8 min run/ 1 min walk segments. I started off slow for the first segment and the pain seemed to ease up a bit after a few min.  At 8 min I stopped to stretch, making sure to pay extra attention to the Achilles tendon.  After stretching for a few min I started running again, but found the pain worse than ever before.  Each time my right heel hit the ground I felt a stabbing pain in the tendon.  After less than a min I stopped running and tried walking, but it ended up being more of a limp.  I tried slowly jogging again, but the stabbing pain returned.  In the end I sadly went to the gym and did 40 min on the bike.  The pain is still there today, so I’ll probably head over to the medical clinic to see if they have any suggestions of exercises to do to help the tendon heal.