What my heel actually cost me last block. Not the pain. The days.

The Solen Base Journal

I can run through sore. What I can't get back is a Saturday long run cut in half.

By Haider Jafri, founder · 5 minute read

A dramatised story. The routine, the objects and the quotes come from real posts and reviews we read while making Solen Base, and the people quoted were writing about other products, not ours. The narrator is a composite, not a customer.

The plan's still on the fridge. I haven't taken it down, which says something.

Three sessions scored through. A Saturday that said 20 and now says 11, in my own handwriting, from the morning I came back early.

The pain was never the problem

People ask if it hurt. Yes. For about four days I walked carefully and winced getting out of bed. I've done worse. Every runner has.

That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is the arithmetic.

Twenty that became eleven. Three sessions I'll never get back. And a whole week where the plan and I stopped trusting each other. Fitness doesn't wait for a heel. By the time I was running properly again, I'd lost the bit of the block I'd been building towards.

What my clubmate said

I was moaning about it on a club run a couple of weeks later and one of the older lads said something I haven't stopped thinking about.

"You do everything else before it goes wrong. Your feet you only do once they have."

He was right. I plan my mileage. I do my strength work on Tuesdays so I don't get hurt. I rotate shoes. I sleep. I eat properly the night before a long one.

And my feet? The jar of Vaseline comes out when the edge of my heel already feels hard and rigid. When I'm already worried. Not a week before.

The boring half of the block

Here's the thing I worked out.

Every plan has two halves. The runs, which are the exciting half. And everything that keeps you able to do the runs. Rest, strength, sleep, fuel. The boring half.

I'd done a good job of the boring half, except for one line. Looking after my heels on the nights in between. That line wasn't on the plan at all.

And I knew exactly why. Because doing it properly was a pain. Vaseline on, then a sacrificial pair of socks I'd keep at the back of the drawer, because it ruins them. Greasy sheets. That smell. So I skipped it, until I was worried, and by then it was often too late.

"I have a few pairs of socks that are my 'sacrificial socks' to get ruined by the vaseline."

A runner on a forum.

The problem wasn't that I didn't know what to do. It was that doing it had a cost every single time, so it never made it onto the plan.

Taking the cost out

That's what led me to Solen Base.

For Vaseline nights, there's the Night Sleeve. Open at the toes, covers the heel. Cotton on the outside and lined with gel on the inside. The gel side goes against the Vaseline, whatever you already use. Nothing is soaked into the fabric. It goes in the wash at 40 degrees in a mesh bag.

For rest days, the Day Sock, closed toe.

It isn't for running in.
Not on a run, not in running shoes. It's for the boring half.

What I want

I want to put it on the plan. Sunday and Wednesday nights. Written down, like a session, so it actually happens.

And I want the next plan on the fridge to come down at the end of the block with nothing crossed out.

If you've got a plan with a crossed out Saturday on it, have a look at how the overnight kit works. There's a fourteen night guarantee.