Sore Achilles Heel Tendon

[DHSlammer]

Originally Posted by Rock7586

I had somthing that sounds very simular. My solution was that my cleat was not going forward enough. I needed to get the cleat right under the ball of my foot.

Once I made the change, back to my old shoes and pedals, and gave enough time to recover. Problem Solved. Pain gone

Bingo, try moving your cleat back on the shoe (therefore your foot moves forward relative to the pedal) effectively giving you better leverage and straining your achilles/calf a lot less.

[CentralCaliBike]

Originally Posted by RMcSEA43

I struggle with the same thing all summer...kept coming back. Here's how I cracked it from advise from others:

1. 2-3 weeks off the bike. When you walk, walk with perfect posture, shoulders back and all, I was amazed how much that helped.

2. You can resume riding after the time off but every time out take a piece of cloth tape and run it vertically from under your heel right up to the bottom of your calf muscle. Brace it with 2 or 3 cross pieces of tape. This keeps your heel from dropping and stressing the tendon. You have to go lightly though, because locked in like that, you can overstress your knee...be careful. The taping really helped me keep riding without stressing the tendon and while I did exercises to strengthen the tendon (like heel rises)

3. Stretching: Back, legs, ankle rotations (both directions). Obviously, take special care with the calves. I found that stretching before riding didn't help much or even made things worse. Stretch as soon as possible after riding.

4. Iceing: Ice the tendon after stretching or at least some time before going to sleep.

5. At my age, (44) I've also found I've had to keep this maintenance up and it hasn't given me problems. When I've stopped the maintenance, the calves would start tightening, and I could tell the tendonitis was coming back. After resuming the maintenance, the discomfort would go away.

Also, it's important to try and figure out what caused the problem and fix it. The other posts had good suggestions. In my case it was a worn out cleat. I replaced it soon after getting the tendonitis, but unlike previous similar times, the pain didn't go away...sigh, I'm getting old.

All of the above helped - but I found that moving the cleat forward on the foot that was having a problem helped me a lot, however, my case may be different from most since I have a leg that is an inch and a half shorter which make the set up difficult (the short leg was the one that had the Achilles problem).

[vladkips]

I had the same, progressively worse to eventually impeding walking. I went and saw a physio. He gave me stretches that helped. Most importantly he explained the whole friction thing. I loved my "old" Time shoes so much I just kept using them even though they were falling apart. The padding at the back of the shoe was starting to tear and deform - he explained this could have been the start of it, increased friction. Check your riding shoes. Second, he looked at the casual shoes I was wearing, same problem - I seem to wear this section of all my shoes out rather quickly. Finally, I also swam at various times in the year and used flippers for different workouts - this may also have been contributing. In my case, retiring the old Times for new ones made the biggest difference, but I now pay attention to all the shoes I wear in terms of potential friction points.