Today I did my first beach run specifically for more targeted arch development. And boy, was it effective.

I’m sure I did less than 1 mile of jogging with a handful of short sprints and lots of walking worked in. My calves locked up immediately when I tried to go up onto my tiptoes after a resting break standing in the ocean.

I could feel the arches very engaged on the beach sand (especially the weaker outer toes), it was perfect! I pushed it a bit too hard, though, considering I had spent much of the past 5 days in my room on the computer!

Something very frightening and interesting happened once I left the beach. The toes were a bit crampy, and my right big toe and 2nd toe were going numb in the very cool air (as were my fingers!). I went to a local cafe, warmed up a bit, was doing some passive foot stretching under the table, but found when I left the restaurant and hopped on a train, that my 2nd toe was still numb and very white.

I tried flexing it many times (it barely still flexed), rubbing my hands over it, breathing my hot air on it (a feat of flexibility!), and tucking the sole against my warm UV-radiated belly and leaning forward to compress the heat onto it. A few cycles of this and I wasn’t getting far. I was getting a bit panicked.

For some reason I felt compelled to sit on the foot with the toes flat. This was super-painful for the top of the foot. But after a good stretching, I put my foot down and color started coming back in. I noticed that my foot was sorest on top where the bones come together more, and that there has always been a kind of calcium or hard small lump fatty-deposit there. It was aching all around that area.

That told me that it wasn’t a temperature issue so much as it was a nerve impingement issue down the top of my foot. As I am developing my arch muscles. The bottoms of the feet shrink up, which means the top of my foot needs to open up and point more down, ballerina-like. It doesn’t yet have that flexibility, so I will need to train that more.

More sitting on my ankles and heels!