Once upon a time there was a girl and her shoes...

 If you haven't been able to keep up with my shoe woes (who could?) here's a little story to get you up to speed:

Once upon a time there was a lovely amazing unique snowflake named Karen who was extremely frustrated with SHOES. 

  When she first started running years ago she had developed runners knee and quit running because she had no clue that her shoes could have possibly be causing it.  That was when she was just running in a pair of shoes she likely grabbed from Target.  

When she started running again, she bought her first pair of Asics, trained for a year or so and developed horrible plantar fasciitis.  She still didn't know much about shoes back then.

 She had to stop running for 10 months and do much taping and slowly building back up to get back to where she could run again.   She researched for hours and hours and knew more about shoes now than she cared to admit.  She decided to try lower drop shoes to fix the problem.  She chose  Brooks PureFlows, which were a 4mm drop minimal shoe and even tried Vibrams for a bit.  She fell DEEPLY in love with her Brooks PureFlows and bought more in every color you can think of. LOL

Her calves hurt a bit in the beginning, but nothing that compression sleeves couldn't help and she went slow. 

 And the calf pain went away and she loved and loved and loved her shoes.  All spring and summer she took selfies of them and rotated them as she trained for her first 10K and started to up her mileage for her first half marathon.

 and then out of nowhere after an 8 mile run, her heel started hurting.  A lot.  It burned when she put her shoe on.  Icing, resting, and the norm didn't really help.  Researched pointed to achilles bursitis in the heel.  She was out for almost 2 months.

 There were desperate acts.  
Cross training and even attempted runs in flip flops. 

and in real desperation to run, the cutting of the back of the shoe.  It worked but wasn't a permanent solution.  Adding the heal seats in the shoes seemed to help a bit though...hmm...

So after accepting that she had to let go of her beloved PureFlows because they were most likely causing the heel bursitis b/c of the low drop, she went back to regular trainers.  Brooks Ghost.

They were pretty, but the love was not there the way it was for her old PureFlows.  They weren't as comfortable, but...they did the job.  The heel bursitis was gone nearly overnight after adding the heel back in.  Yay, right??? Maybe.

Training continued for her first half and although she didn't love her new shoes, she was glad to be able to run again and build her mileage up.  Until her knees started hurting.  More rest...more knee pain...it never got better, she had to cut back on her mileage and only got to 10 miles before the race.  There was no way to change shoes right before her race, but in the back of her head, she wondered if the knee pain was caused by these shoes.  Race day came and she was able to push through the knee pain and complete her goal!  

Pain is temporary, however, and after crossing that finish line and recovering for over a week and a half, she decided to run again but this time in the old PureFlows (not the cut ones! LOL) 

Out she went for her run and again fell in love with her low drop shoes within seconds.  2.5 miles later and guess what?  NO KNEE PAIN!!!!!!  No knee pain in these low drop shoes! It had been 2 months since she had run without knee pain.   She immediately went to the computer and decided to use her bday gift card to purchase some Altra Torins (also low drop shoes).  

The next day she went on a 4 mile walk with her husband in her PureFlows...and came home with a nagging feeling in her heel.  No!!!!!!

 That's right.  The low drop shoes are perfect for her knees but cause achilles bursitis in her heel.  The higher/regular drop shoes fix the achilles issue but cause horrible knee problems.  And here our story ends because there is no ending to this story.  It's just left up in the air, just like our heroine...with no working shoes. 

I was thinking middle-of-the-way drop shoes? 8mm?  Low drop shoes but with a heel cushion insert that will raise my heels a bit? Other than that, I'm at a complete loss, feeling like I have to choose one injury over the other.  

Anyone brilliant out there who has a suggestion? Do you ever feel like you are choosing one injury over another or that you just cannot find the right shoe?