Because I haven't actually ranted about it on here yet, because it's been canonically discussed in the Other Place:
I only got as far as Maastricht under my own power on
the recent Fridays' tour. By the end of the fourth day I was suffering from being out in the heat too long, but also had some niggling achilles pain on the left side that I didn't think much of at the time. The following day - ostensibly a rest day - I chose to ride on to Maastricht (couldn't go any further, because Belgians are allergic to having campsites in useful places) in order to cut the mileage on the day after that, which was also forecast to be insanely hot.
As I took it easy on the route from Aachen to Maastricht, the achilles pain returned with a vengeance, on both sides. From then on, I was in pain pretty much every time I took a step or turned a pedal, with stairs and clipping in being excruciating. I completed the rest of the tour primarily by rail, with a few kilometres of gentle cycling to join things up. (Apart from the final morning when [REDACTED] changed the plan without telling me and I had to ride across Dunkirk in about 50 minutes, causing the whole thing - which seemed to be slowly improving - to flare up again).
So ...yeah.
I don't really know what caused it. My educated guess is that the problem is inflammation around the tendons at the back of the ankles; it's not muscular, I haven't bashed them, it doesn't really hurt to prod, is more to do with range of motion than force and there was for a while some barely visible puffiness which has now gone.
Possible factors include:
- Riding long days back to back. Nothing I haven't done before, but not recently.
- Riding in pan flat conditions. I'm used to rolling hills.
- Prolonged group riding. Normally I'm riding solo or tortoise/haring other riders.
- Newish SD65 sandals. My usual pair are threatening to fail, so I used the new ones (same shoes I wore on the Normandy tour in June, and for various rides to break them in before that).
- Lots of crouching and crawling into tents wearing the above (but it's not like I haven't done weeks of camping with them before).
- Dehydration, exhaustion, sense of humour failure, etc. leading to poor pedalling technique towards the end of day 4.
- Karmic retribution for well-behaved Knees, trivial mechanicals, no major digestive episodes, etc.
Since I got home I've been wearing my well-worn veggie docs (best compromise between pressure on the ankle and extra stress on the achilles from walking on tiptoe / in flipflops) and generally trying to walk as little as possible, particularly stairs. I haven't been near a bike.
It's now back to the point where it only really hurts on stairs, but I expect it wouldn't last if I walked any distance.
I'm working on the principle that I'll give it a week, and if it's not markedly improved, I'll start to think about medical attention. Until then I'll just take it easy and be depressed by the prospect of this being a long term thing resulting in no proper bike rides until the middle of sodding winter, or worse.
