So today was go have been my fifth 6k run in a row, every two days.
About a kilometre into the run I noticed intermittent discomfort in my left foot when it bore weight. In fact it was a kind of shooting pain, localised to my metatarsal heads and toes. I carried on for another half a K before I decided to abort and walk back home. Even this wasn’t completely comfortable, as every tenth step or so I the shooting pain happened again. Before I got home I’d decided that I must have a splinter of some sort that was touching on a nerve, causing the uncomfortable shooting pain. There was nothing to see, I couldn’t see any evidence of anything, except for what looked like a tiny blood blister.
Based on this I had a long soak in the bath, and sure enough, when picked at with a needle, I could hear something in there. It took some getting out as it was deep, but eventually I extracted a small piece of green glass that must have measured 3x2x0.5mm. There was no pain digging it out. It was wedged in the now thicker skin under my second metatarsal head. Had I had a needle or something similar with me I reckon I could have extracted it out on the route and carried on. I only really noticed it as the end was obviously just touching on nerve.
Looking back I do remember stepping on what I thought was a small stone in that area about 300 metres into the run. It must have taken the rest of the first kilometre to work its way onto the nerve.
Now that it’s out, I can’t feel a thing. I’m going to do the run again tomorrow night and fingers crossed everything will be fine.
Considering I started barefooting and bare shoe running over two years ago, and I’ve been running completely barefoot for the last 11 months, I think that’s not bad; only having one piece of glass in my foot this whole time. I think I’ve probably have more splinters in my hands over that period, and nobody thinks anything of that.