Anyone have experience dealing with Haglund’s? I’ve fearing I have haglund’s and just started the search for doctors and whatnot. I’ve been dealing with the pain for a couple years now, and I’m starting to think surgery might be the only solution. I’ve run my whole life, and love running long distances. I had zero injuries about 5 years ago when I was doing high volume training. I started to ride my bike more and cut back on running. When I came back to running, I started to feel the pain in the back of my heel and started to notice the “pump bump”. Since the pain started I cut my mileage down to 10 miles a week which is almost nothing to me. Still ride my bike, but want to enjoy running again. I’ve tried cutting the backs of my shoes heel counter, stretching my calf, icing, reducing mileage, avoiding inclines, etc and still get flareups all the time.
I’ve got haglunds and it’s especially bad on my left side. I’ve learned how to manage the pain and the symptoms. I’ve been managing it for 5+ years now. Some doctors/PT treat it the same way they treat Achilles tendonitis and that’s typically what I am diagnosed with, although it’s not correct. Pain and tightness is especially bad in the morning. But once I loosed it up I am usually good to go and have even built up to 100 mile weeks on my bum Achilles. The key for me is that the tendons around the heel and my foot can’t be cold. Being cold makes everything much much worse for me (and being in Minnesota, staying warm isn’t easy). I also notice the pain gets worse if I gain any weight so it’s good incentive to eat healthy. I know the day is coming when I won’t be able to manage this injury, but that day hasn’t come yet.
I can only wear certain shoes (I’m a chick). High heels are out for me and any type of dress shoe that isn’t forgiving around the heel. My running shoes have to be at least 13 mm of drop (none of those minimalist shoes for me).