from Kristen in Garrett County: "Trouble Underfoot"

Maybe it goes back to spending half the summer on the Shore in flip-flops. That’s hind sight. It was a mile into my final leg of the Osprey Sprint Triathlon the bottom of my left foot first went crazy on me. I took it down a notch for most of the run, kicked it across the finish, chalked it up to the compromised 10 weeks of training I’d undergone and didn’t think much of it after. All in all I had a fantastic first race.
A couple weeks later though it happened again on an easy trail run, and not long after, my favorite tactical ranger boots made for small havoc under the one, if not both, and out of the clear blue had me walking a halting, stilted gait all day long.
This just can’t happen.
I went to TheFinishLine for gel arches. I went to the chiropractor to assess the situation. Apparently my arches are riding low, but I have no previous measurements to which I can compare this. He taped my arches to my ankles, which was a big help structurally, but the tape only lasted as long as my shower that night. So I quickly dried my feet, outlined the original tape with an ink pen, and learned to tape them myself the rest of the week. There’s now custom insoles underfoot, which are much better for my work boots, but much worse in my running shoes, my hiking boots, and incompatible with Chacos I’m sure.
I’m pulling for it to be just an athletic injury, and with gel and tape I can keep my feet intact from Georgia to Maine. 2200 miles is a long haul though.

I’m told thru-hikes have an inordinate preoccupation with their feet by common standards. A hang-nail is the end of the world, because that easily becomes ingrown, becomes infected, puts the owner “off-trail”, which is a fate worse than purgatory.
This I understand already. Early last October I yo-yoed the Catoctin Trail in a long weekend, and just after beginning to retrace my steps, I sat down at a stream to refill water and look after my feet. While I thought I was trimming off unwanted callous, in reality I cut a whole unknown blister clear off the bottom of my littlest toe. I hadn’t felt it as such until that moment, but I knew immediately that I was in for misery. Less misery than an amateur in such straits, less misery than one with a low threshold of pain, but misery nonetheless. 25 more miles of misery, vowed never to be repeated. If thru-hikers are obsessed with their feet, bag big miles, and hike without conscious thought to the fact that their bodies are walking, that’s when I became a thru-hiker.