The Ultrarunner’s Guide to Foot Care

The foot carries us through each of our runs; however, it is a body part we may take advantage of. We may buy socks to cushion the blow and splurge on shoes we know will hold us through mountains, valleys and deserts. Then we take our running shoes off and start rehabbing our knees and hips, but some of us need to learn to look after our feet between the miles. 

“Runners, we forget, and we put so much energy into doing the right thing when we’re running, but we don’t think about doing anything when we’re not running,” says Kim-Ngan Harwood, ultrarunner and Podiatrist based in Melbourne. 

Ngan (Kim) Harwood, while being a top podiatrist at The Footcare Clinic, is also a keen ultramarathon runner herself: ” I started running when I had my first child. I was a gym junky before then. And having her, I thought, I can’t go to the gym that often because of the baby. So, I started to think about what else I could do to remain fit. And running was just it seemed easy.”

“I’m not a fast runner, but having the podiatry background, knowing about footwear, wanting to be fit, it was a perfect ingredient, a perfect recipe for running. I looked up and found that there were major marathons worldwide, and I just got hooked. So I started ticking them off in 2018; I completed the six major marathons (Tokyo, Berlin, New York, Chicago, Boston and London).”

Kim completed the Tarawera Marathon in 2019 and got into the TD UTMB on the ballot in 2022 but missed out on cut-offs due to some injuries.