I forgot to mention that I wore my old motion-control Asics Gel Kayanos the last time I ran. I pulled out the stiff “extra” motion-control inserts I had in there and used the standard one I got with my new Mizunos. As far as my feet went, the run went pretty well. I once again felt the need for extra cushion on the ball of my feet.

So today I wore them again, but this time I found an old cushiony set of inserts to use instead. My thinking was I might be able to deal with the issue with the balls of my feet. The cushion felt pretty good on the run. Toward the end I noticed that I was flapping with my left foot. My right footstrike felt fine, but the left came down as a slap. This immediately caught my attention as this was one of the first things I noticed when running with the ms-related problems I was having with my legs. This happened twice before and at times would get so bad that my one foot (I think it was the left) would almost drag causing me to fall a couple of times. Basically what was happening then was I couldn’t get the front of my foot to pull up far enough, which would cause my toe to drag on the surface. It was almost as if my whole lower leg went numb and I couldn’t make it work as fully as I normally would be able to (and need to to run). I remember thinking at the time that I was worried I was reprogramming my stride to do the incorrect form and that I would never get it back. When the attack ended after a couple of months, my normal stride came back.

So, I was alarmed. I continued on, step, slap, step, slap. I tried to pull my foot up higher as I struck the ground. I could, with none of the previous problems. I also noticed if I ran on the side of my foot that the slapping would subside a bit. But that wasn’t right either. Then it dawned on me, maybe it was the insert. The heel of this particular cushion insert was really thick which I thought maybe was enough to cause the front of my foot to slap as it tried to land correctly, but hit the heal to quickly.

So I finished my run, went in and replaced the cushion inserts with the standard Mizuno ones and went out for a few more blocks to see how it went. Turned out I no longer was slapping. Even when I tried to relax and let my footstrike happen without any mental intervention, everything was fine. I think this was a bit more pronounced for me as my right leg is shorter than my left and I wear a lift in the right side to compensate. This has caused me a variety of issues over the years. This was certainly one of them.