I sympathize. This sort of
I sympathize. This sort of pain was always my problem, as well, although not so much recently.
Try this: Find the place you feel pain with your fingers, then follow it up your calf to find where it's tender. (The muscles of the calf are the source of many tendons in the foot.) It could be a couple of things - the flexors, which control the pointing movement of the foot, or the tibialis anterior, which is a muscle on the front of the calf whose tendon travels under the arch.
Move your foot around to see what direction fires up that tender area(s) in your calf. If you're pointing your foot (plantarflexing) when it fires up, and it's deep in the calf to the back or on the inside, then most likely you are pushing off too much when you're running, or your feet still need some training time. If it's a bulging muscle at the top of the front calf when you flex the foot up (dorsiflexing), you may be pulling the foot up too much as you run. Notice if you're pushing off too much or landing on the wrong part of your foot for your particular gait. For most people, the midfoot is the best place to land. (In my case, landing on my midfoot actually gives me posterior arch pain. I find a very soft forefoot landing where I take time to touch the heel down gives me relief...I think I'm odd that way, though.)
Rest is good. Here are some things to try to build strength and range of motion that you can do, too:
[*]This is to relax the muscles. Get a tennis ball or pinky ball and while standing up, gently roll the sole of the foot from the arch to the toes and then back to the heel. Then sit down so your leg is flat and put the tennis ball under your calf and see if you can roll it out, too, front, side and back (use your hand to get to the front). If it's the flexors, they attach all the way to the base of the toes below the foot, through a notch at the back of the arch and up the inside of the calf. If you're a pronator and the pronation is bothering you, check out the joints of and the space between the big and second toes and give that a roll, or massage it with a hand. [*]Do you know the towel squish? Lay out a towel and gather it with your toes while you sit in a chair. That helps build the intrinsic muscles, as well as the flexors. [*]For issues with the tibialis anterior, work on building your range of motion in dorsiflexion so that you can relax into that position instead of having to actively pull the foot up. That would be achilles stretches, both with bent and straight knees.
I'm curious to know what you find if you try these.
