Towards the end of practice on Tuesday, we were given a 200 kick as part of the warm down set. Nothing crazy or extreme. Still, I reached for my fins. A life long weak kicker, I have gotten into what is probably a bad habit — I put fins on for any kind of kick set.
Except that I barely got through one 100 with them that day. The throbbing across the top of my left foot was so bad that I had to take my that fin off RIGHT AWAY and finish the 200 without fins.
Very odd. As far as I knew, my foot didn’t hurt at all up until that moment. I couldn’t think of a recent left-foot trauma event either — I hadn’t dropped anything on it, hadn’t landed on it funny, etc.
I switched the fins on my feet to see if maybe that one fin was somehow mangled from the great equipment bag freeze of the week before. But nope, my left foot still killed, my right was fine.
Very peculiar.
Back at home later that night, I checked out my foot. I did have a slight bump where I had felt the pain, and there was some bruising. It still ached as well. Huh — apparently I did do something to my foot.
Luckily, my home remedy treatments are working well — slap some arnica on the area, elevate and ice the foot each night while watching the entire Olympic evening program, and wear sneakers, the loosest, most supportive shoes I have in my closet, as much as possible.
Since Tuesday, I sucked it up and kicked sans fins Thursday. It didn’t hurt so much kicking as when pushing off walls. But it is getting better. Today it was only a little irritated during the one kick set we did (you’ll be proud to know that although I used my fins then, I did not use my fins for the kick portion of the warm up).
Maybe this is a good wake up call — I doubt my kicking will improve if I use my fins all the time, so it’s time to kick my fin dependency and give my foot a chance to heal.
Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist