Fixing Your Feet: Prevention and Treatment for Athletes

Fixing Your Feet: Prevention and Treatments for Athletes - 4th edition 2006 - The best-selling book on foot care for people who want to keep their feet happy and healthy.

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Introduction

Whether we are walkers, runners of short- to marathon-length events, ultramarathoners, adventure racers of one-day to multiday events, casual hikers or thru-hikers of the long trails, soccer or tennis players, it is our feet that propel us toward our goal. They are our primary means of transportation. Too many of us know how the pain of blistered feet, a turned ankle, or other foot trauma can destroy our motivation to continue in an activity no matter how much our minds prod us to continue.

Out of problems come solutions. My motivation to write this book arose from my personal foot problems and seeing and hearing the horror stories of athletes who suffer as a result of their foot problems. I have patched thousands of feet. I have repaired blisters for women walking for loved ones at cancer walks. I have cut the socks off a runner’s feet at mile 92 of a 100-mile run and seen the skin fall off the bottoms of both feet. I have helped runners who completed a 100-mile run and could hardly walk because of the terrible condition of their feet. I have seen the macerated skin on the feet of runners who fail to take care of their feet through an ultramarathon, and I have watched the grimacing faces of adventure racers as their teammates tried to repair their horribly blistered and battered feet. I have watched as well-meaning crews and teammates have tried to repair the feet of their fellow athletes and as well-meaning aid-station volunteers have tried their best to fix the feet of athletes in their events. In all of these examples, the athletes, crews, and teammates have tried their best based on their limited knowledge of what to do, and most often have done well. But often there is a better way or other options—and they can be found in the pages of this fourth edition of Fixing Your Feet.

If there is one thing I have learned about foot care in the 10 years since I started to research and write the first edition of Fixing Your Feet, it is that there are lots of foot problems and more than one solution for each problem.

Click here to go to FixingYourFeet.com.