Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Anne on September 19, 2011 at 7:29am

Hi Dave;

Achilles pain can come from a couple of reasons - seat height, cleat position, foot alignment. It is basically an inbalance in how the muscles are used in the cycling motion.

Is the pain more pronounced at the heel or at the calf muscle?

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Permalink Reply by Dave Jacque on September 19, 2011 at 7:58am

Right above the heel. Probably should have mentioned that I'm using toe cages.

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Permalink Reply by Anne on September 19, 2011 at 8:51am

oh, well in that case, excessive dorsiflexion of the foot due to use of running shoes is likely the cause.

Curious to know what your longest ride usually is? You must have been putting on some significant mileage to do a century, but you owe it to yourself to use a rigid sole such as in a cycling shoe to do those distances comfortably.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Jacque on September 19, 2011 at 9:22am

Longest previous ride was a metric back in June. Don't remember having this problem then. I was actually wearing rigid-sole cycling shoes for the century, but normally I'm wearing, yes, running shoes.

I'll try to get a 20-25 mile ride in at least once a week, with 5-10 milers as often as the weather permits. So yeah, yesterday's ride was a *significant* jump from my usual neighborhood puttering. Maybe I just need to start taking longer rides more often!

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Permalink Reply by S on September 19, 2011 at 9:40am

There's a couple of things you can do to help reduce the pain.  I'd try a few stretching exercises and then eccentric exercises for the achilles.  Basically, raise yourself onto tip-toes, then raise one leg and slowly lower yourself on just one leg until your heel is on the ground again.  Do 2 sets of 15 or 3 sets of 10 everyday, and that should help with the pain.  There's also a brace you can get that relieves some of the pressure off of the achilles just above the heel that will probably help you with moving around.  Also, it's probably good to back off and let your achilles heal.  I'd also ice it down once or twice a day. The tendon doesn't get much blood supply so it tends to heal slowly so be careful otherwise you may get chronic tendonitis which is not fun at all.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Jacque on September 20, 2011 at 2:00am

Yikes - hadn't thought about the tendinitis angle. Good takeaways here: warmup exercises and wearing the rigid-sole shoes regularly. Thanks all!

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Permalink Reply by S on September 20, 2011 at 5:00am

I'd be careful about that stair stretch, it's hard to control the stretch and if your achilles is inflamed, you may end up rupturing it.  The risk isn't super high but it's higher than doing something like this.

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