I am pretty upset. My (first) marathon is in 29 days and my feet hurt.

Now that's now where I want to be hurting right now.

The good news is: nothing else hurts. After long runs (since hitting more than 25km regularly), I have had sore feet for 3-5 hours and the next morning it would be totally gone.

But last week they started hurting about 10 km in my 35 km long run. I decided to keep going to see if it was merely discomfort or really pain, and by the time I hit the halfway point I was in quite a bit of pain. I ran through it (how stupid is that) and back home.

My feet hurt seriously for 2 days after that and mildly for the rest of the week. I didn't run but cycled more than usual, which also felt good and fun. Today I was scheduled to run 20km (rest week) but there was no way I was going to do that. I woke up and my feet were not hurting (or very little), so I took off for a gentle walk-run, 2min run 1min walk sort of thing. I made it 5 km and I decided to walk home. I'm not in a lot of pain, but nothing is improving.

My husband (resident in pathology but also a trained kinesiologist) has home-diagnosed soft-tissue injury of the ligament that holds my smaller toes on the left foot to my ankle (or something like that). I am pretty confident there is nothing broken, but I'd be curious to hear about the experience of people who have had stress fractures. How did it feel?

My shoes are only 400 km in. I was planning to replace them when I hit 500 in a couple of weeks, so I had time to break them in before the race. When those shoes wear out normally I feel some knee pain, but I've had none of that.

I've been getting massage every 3rd week and last time was just before the dreadful 35 km run. I'm feeling looser than normal (in a good way).

Now I'm thinking about keeping the volume down for a bit longer, and maybe getting OTC orthotics. But I'm also worried about the upcoming marathon. I don't think I need to run another super-long-run, but I also don't want to lose the fitness.

HELP!