Friday, February 6, 2009

Old Man


For some time now, Roy has been having issues with his tendons, more specifically his Achilles. The guy who used to be able to run no stop, can only run for a limited time after which he can't walk properly for a day. He has been able to channel his energy into other activities that he enjoys such as swimming and biking, but deep down I can tell he misses his running days. We started trying new things to see if Roy's tendons would heal themselves. Of course the first step was to stop running all together. Than we changed shoes and tried inserts. While all of these things have helped, they haven't given him the ability to run again. We have been doing a lot of research and we have come across two things that we are excited to try. One was a specialized athletic tape. This is the type of stuff that you see all over athletes now in funky criss-cross patterns on the shoulders, knees, hamstrings, calf's, etc. It was designed to work with the bodies natural way of healing and speed up recovery. The other is a shoe, but not any normal shoe. It's called the fivefinger shoe and is designed as if you were walking barefoot.
We don't know if any of these will help Roy's poor tendons, but we are willing to try anything so the old man can run again.

2 comments:

Heather said...

Let me know how those cool shoes work out and the tape! I've always had problems with my knees and can't ever get them back to "normal"...the arches in my feet cause great pain when walking for any distance too, let me know! :) (OH and btw I think we're all old men/women...we just don't want to admit it! :)

Colette said...

I am not 100% confident in this answer, but I believe that it was you who sat on me. Since I am not 100% confident I didn't mention that part . . . but if my memory serves me correctly - it was you!