Working shoe problems...

flammee

Barefooters
Mar 11, 2012
268
296
63
45
Finland, Oulu
Well, I just needed pair of minimalist working shoes, so I bought vivobarefoot gobis. I started having achilles pain in my left foot. It took month for me to realize that it was not running related injury, although I was running a lot more than before.. So I changed my working shoes to vb breatho trails.. My achilles got better and I was able to run even more (500km/month).. But I work mostly on hard concrete floor, so after a week wearing breathos, lugs started to cause severe pain at bottoms of my feet. So I bought merrell road gloves, after a few days I was in too much of a pain because of arch supports they have. I also tried running with road gloves. Painful and such a lousy ground feel, running felt just boring. So I changed to vb aqua lites. I used them alongside with gobis before, at start of summer but they were too hot to use too much. They worked okay for a week, then that same achilles pain returned. It took me again some time to realize that it's not a running related injury, it's about work shoes. This just sucks.. Next I'm going to try altra insticts, but last time I used them to running, I got arch pain, they probably don't have built in arch support but it seems that they have compressed a bit more on heel and ball of feet, so there's a little bit of arch. This just sucks. :(

While running, that achilles pain happens on push off phase when running slow. While running fast, there's no pain. I tried bending my legs a bit more when running slow, so that I would run more on forefeet (like when going fast), it seemed to help a bit, at push off phase there wasn't pain then, but the next day my achilles was in much more pain.

At my previous job, I used rubber boots that I had zero dropped simply by cutting the heel off, I hadn't such foot problems, but I really wouldn't like to use rubber boots. Before zero dropping them, I had severe ankle problems.. It was hard to find great running shoes, it seems to be equally hard to find good working shoes. I would probably need a zero drop shoe that has a bit of cushioning and no arch support at all.. Although, breathos didn't have cushioning, but didn't cause achilles pain. :confused: And when I find good working shoes, I probably will burn the ones that caused me such pains. :mad: