I've only used a roller on my IT bands. This particular Achilles issue is an injury; I was crossing a creek and thought I'd get cute and put the edge of my left boot on a little ledge of a boulder... "just like rock climbing when I was young!".... as I was attempting the step across the boot slipped and I landed hard on my left foot in the creek. Didn't hurt at the time but as the day progressed it got worse. I hiked about 4 miles in it afterwards that day which was probably not wise but, y'know, it's ELK season!
I stretched the whole leg, my whole body actually, aggressively last night and at least got the rest of the leg functioning correctly again. Everything was going to poop from limping on it.
I think I need to acknowledge that I've crossed a body threshold and start acting accordingly. A LOT more proactive stretching and to your point, rolling, and then I just need to be smarter out in the field. This is now officially a pattern, starting with IT pain on a mulie backpack hunt, then the PF issue, then the thing on the back of my knee, now this.
It's my karma for saying I'd never met a hike I couldn't do. True when I said it... now maybe not so much. I pissed off the hiking gods. D'oh.
