Need some help please!
I'm coming from a very sedentary, overweight lifestyle. I quit my horrible soul-sucking, stressful job last spring and have been making big changes in both diet and exercise (now that I'm able to concentrate on myself and not so sad/stressed all the time). It has resulted in a 100 pound weight loss, some pretty decent muscle development and increases in stamina and overall health. I'm damned proud of myself and I hope to keep losing weight and improving.
I have added walking daily and have been working up to slow jogging for some of the distance for the last two plus months. Keeping in mind that I've started from virtually zero, as I'm sure there are plenty on here in much better shape and will think my distances pitiful, but I'm now averaging 3-5 miles daily and some days have been able to get up to 7 miles.
But I have developed a rather painful blister on the inside big toe - between the big and second toes. The secondary toe that is next to the blister area is not effected, and the only thing that seems to make it possible to continue exercising is taping. The problem is the blister won't heal since when it gets taped, it gets sweaty and wet and starts hurting again. I am not pulling the roof of the blister off or anything, it seems like it just gets wet from sweat and gets gross all over again. And if I use something like Vaseline instead of taping, it just redevelops into a blister again.
I am pretty sure it was caused by a combo of increasing the amount of walking/jogging and wearing regular cotton socks. I've switched over to thin nylon ones and no further blisters have developed anywhere else, and I have two different pairs of shoes that I'm switching between to make sure that they're not causing specific issues (one is a very old well broken in pair that I was wearing when the blister developed; and a brand new pair that I've just started breaking in this past week).
It popped but I didn't deroof it, just cleaned it and used some antibacterial on it for the first couple of days. It redeveloped into a new blister, and popped again. If I leave it alone, it seems to dry out and doesn't hurt, but as soon as I tape up and go out for an hour, it looks and feels awful after I take the tape off.
I am taking at least one full rest day and I am using aloe now and I go barefoot most of the time so the blister is exposed to air, but I want to keep walking/jogging without having to tape since it seems like it just makes things worse.
So should I quit walking until it's completely healed? Is there any other way to keep it from blistering further but not cause it to get all gross again but still go out? I'm getting worried it's going to just get infected if it keeps going the way it's going now. Or that I'll have to stop completely for a week just to avoid it coming back, which would be awful for me right now, but I'll stop if that's really the only way to handle this.