View Full Version : Anyone else experience ankle pain from hiking shoes with curved up toe area?
crazypete
08-28-2010, 18:50
I recently upgraded from my merill radius to a merill moab and noticed the front of the shoe has more of a propensity to "roll forward" due to the toe box being curved up. I assumed that this was for ease of pushing off but it is giving me ankle pain and shin pain. Most of my other shoes are totally flat soles like dress shoes and tennis shoes. I noticed some shin pain years ago with some running shoes that had the same "toe curl"
Is this a normal phenomenon and something to train through or should I shelf them?
My ankle and shin pain (I am apparantly susceptible to it) in the past has come from shoes which were too high. I have since switched to low top hikers and trail runners and have been much happier.
I don't wear Merrill shoes as they are too narrow in the toe box and too big, volume wise, for my flat feet.
Most recently I switched to Asics trail runners and have been happy with the fit but a bit disappointed in the lack of grip on wet rock.
crazypete
08-29-2010, 06:31
Now that you mention it, these shoes are a bit higher than the others. Maybe that is the source of my problems. Like you said, though, the grip on the merill vibram sole is phenomenal so I might just try to find a pair of surplus radius's that have already proven themselves in the field for me.
Blue Jay
08-29-2010, 07:26
Merrill shoes are overall no longer anywhere near as good as they used to be. I used to only wear Merrill. Someone at EMS told me they were bought out.
Merill makes shoes to fit the average foot. That's great if you have an average shaped foot.
I had a pair of shoes with the toe box rolled up and liked that feature, but the shoes were a bad fit and caused blisters. I think they were #2 on the long list of my quest for the perfect trail shoe.
crazypete
08-29-2010, 17:07
Yup, its the moabs.
I just reran the same 10 minute hill practice loop I was doing yesterday in my old merills and I had not a bit of ankle pain. It's AMAZING what a tiny bit of extra toe curl can do to ones body!
I had to just return my LaSportiva Wildcats which felt so cushy in the soles after only 2 days of hiking because the toe bumper was attached in such a way that it pushed down on my toenails causing great discomfort. The narrower toebox on the Wildcats, when compared to the previous shoe I was hiking in, the Keen Targhee II's, was no help either as my feet had actually expanded after hiking 1400 miles causing mashed toes. The Oboz Sawtooths, although quite heavy, but durable and Montrail Sabinos have the wide toebox I prefer for my EEEE wide feet - lots of toe wiggle room
I thru-hiked 1400 miles in southern Utah and northern Arizona with the Moab Ventilator non GTX low cuts and had no similar toe, ankle, or shin problems. Could these conditions be occuring simply because your feet are different than mine or perhaps there are other factors involved like shoe size fit or orthotics?
crazypete
08-29-2010, 20:21
Wierd thing because my legs were super strong and I wore really hard shoes most of the time during the workweek but would go on ~45 min power walks. I figured after years of that, my shin muscles would be raging beasts.
But one set of silly shoes and I kicked off months of shin pain. It came on suddenly in February and I stopped hiking, never attributing the months of shin and ankle pain to the short time I used the "wrong shoes".
I got metatarsal fractures from too much toe-spring in a pair of Montrail Hardrocks. Toespring can definitely cause problems, but what those problems may be are probably going to be different for everybody.
Wise Old Owl
08-29-2010, 21:55
Merrill shoes are overall no longer anywhere near as good as they used to be. I used to only wear Merrill. Someone at EMS told me they were bought out.
Yes the putz who told you that was correct..
Sep 15, 2008 · Bank of America said Monday it will buy Merrill Lynch:rolleyes: ................Sales people!
Nothing Person Blue Jay... lets keep hiking....
crazypete
08-29-2010, 22:16
Toe spring..... my adversary now has a name!
Thanks. Now I can use that technical term next time I go shoe shopping.
crazypete
08-31-2010, 09:15
I cannot figure out if stretches are helping or aggravating the situation. I think I just gave myself peroneal tendonitis. Darnit.
At the moment, I am walking off some pes anserine bursitis in the inner leg tendon behind the knee. Stretches seem to aggravate the problem but I also feel like the lengthened muscle has now stopped aggravating the tendon. It is getting better despite continued stretching and I can stand without pain.
With my peroneal and extensors, I do know that I have tight calves and my shins hurt after walking so the tight muscles could be the cause, yanking on my foot tendons but the problem is SO aggravated by stretching, I dont know if trying to stretch it out is the ticket or just a ticket to more pain.
Like Dogwood, I have logged many miles in these types of hiking shoes and the only factor I can think of is that I had to sit for a month to wait out a completely different injury and everything tightened up.
Here's a good article. I read this after I got metatarsal stress fractures from wearing stiff-soled shoes with a big toespring.
http://www.unshod.org/pfbc/pfrossi2.htm
crazypete
09-03-2010, 23:38
Here's a good article. I read this after I got metatarsal stress fractures from wearing stiff-soled shoes with a big toespring.
http://www.unshod.org/pfbc/pfrossi2.htm
What changes did you make to recover?
I did, in fact, read this article before! It made me go out and buy a pair of vibram 5 fingers. They havent seen much use to be honest but I might revisit them.
IronGutsTommy
09-04-2010, 22:43
resad the article.. all it did was paint a doomsday picture with no resolution or options whatsoever. oh well sore feet it is.. im going to the dr schools kiosk where they scan your feet and prescribe a custom orthotic to match your foot shape and pressure points. they cost 50 bucks but for a thru one or two pairs seem worth it.. will they help?? according to the article, nothing will. that article may be true but it does absolutely nothing at all for the reader.. hate articles like that.. itd be like going to a dating site and they just show u a pic of a supermodel and say YOU HAVE NO CHANCE!!!
crazypete
09-04-2010, 23:50
Well, the one thing it got right is that walking barefoot is the most natural and it does seem to be true, in my case, that not wearing shoes at all helps or at least doesnt hurt as much.
So I've been staying out of them at home and building some ankle strength as I can. I guess thats the only real take away message from the article.
How that article helped me was it showed me what to do to heal my injury. I was injured by wearing Montrail Hardrocks, a shoe that everybody really liked. This was back when they were the top shoe everybody raved about.
The curved up toe was super damaging for me. I was in so much pain. I tried stuffing all kinds of insoles in them to compensate for that curved up toe, but nothing worked. I was popping up to 12 ibuprofen at a time to try to survive. I had to leave the trail because I had these shooting electric shocks of pain that went through my foot and up my leg. It would send me to my knees while I was hiking. When I walked it felt like my bones were bouncing as if they were broken.
I searched and searched for information to try and understand what I did to myself so I could avoid it in the future and found that article and as a result what I did to heal myself was walk around my neighborhood barefoot. It felt really healing and after 6 weeks I was feeling real relief.
Then I went to my running store and told them my story. I told them in no uncertain terms that I would not accept anything with motion control or a stiff sole. I wanted something flexible yet with a good tread for trails. They brought out a few pairs to try and I bought one. I took it out on a few tests. It seemed to work. I bought 3 more pairs online and managed to complete the trail happily, pain free.
crazypete
09-06-2010, 17:30
I did some soul searching this weekend and thought back to when all the problems started and they started a long time ago when I started following conventional wisdom that ..well...."athletes need to stretch". I had gotten by my entire life before being very active and never stretching, wearing normal shoes with regular inserts and just leaving everything alone.
Oddly, it seems when I started intentionally pulling on muscles (under my own direction and later on, under the direction of PT's) to lengthen them, I would always feel very sore afterward. Coming to the conclusion that there is some physical deformity or injury underneath, I started doing stupid things like icing and wrapping my calves with ace bandages and wearing inserts and surprise surprise, everything got worse. Then I went to doctors and they gave me anti inflammatory pills and told me to ice and stretch more and more and do more balancing and strengthening excercises and it got even worse.
Finally, I had to move recently and when I got here, I tossed it all out the window and shockingly noticed a great improvement. The less I messed, the better it got. But this cant be true....so I started stretching to get even more benefit and ended up hardly able to walk for a week.
I recently got my MRI back and they said my knee looks great, nothing damaged other than an inflamed pes anserine tendon. I was puzzled....where is this pai9n coming from?
Finally, this weekend, I looked at my orthotic shoes....and put them aside. I picked up my pumas, little more than totally flexible rubber soles. no "support", no anything. One step removed from barefoot. I went the entire weekend on car trips and walking around and I shockingly feel much better.
It could very well be that all this cure and support and fixing WAS the problem, along with a mild soreness from a crappy pair of shoes to set it off. If this is the case, I'll feel like such an idiot to have wasted a year of my life in pain but I'll be much wiser for it.