Could be worse I suppose

I've been spending time off the bike of late in the hope that my foot will recover. In order to cheer myself up about missing PBP this time and to spend my airfare on something more interesting than whitegoods, while taking some of the weight off my foot - I am going to learn to paraglide in Manilla next week. Should be great.

As far as the foot goes I wish it were better, but it seems not. It's getting worse.

Initially I was treated for metatarsalgia, I got some orthotics fitted in my cycling shoes and moved to a roomier fit with a Look style cleat replacing my SPDs in order to spread the load. As noted, this didn't really work, though the Sidi Lazars are great in every other way.

The primary cause of the pain as it turns out is neuroma, or more specifically Mortons Neuroma, which is basically a benign tumor on the nerve sheaf in my foot between my metatarsals. It is exacerbated by applying pressure to the ball of the foot and apparently one of the causes is wearing high heeled shoes.

I don't wear stilettos so much, but I spent a great deal of time during my twenties and early thirties wearing really tight fitting rock climbing shoes such as these Boreal Aces -



The style for rock shoes was the tighter the better so a good fitting rock climbing shoe was 2 sizes smaller than a walking shoe. In hindsight I can see that something was bound to give eventually.

So the "foot" is now bad enough to cause problems when I'm just walking around, so I am beginning to think that getting a cortisone injection will be the next stage of therapy.

Anyway as its all pretty stuffed, and is getting painful to walk, I may as well ride.

So tomorrow, I'm reduxing yet again!