Turf Toe from Climbing/Scrambling/Running?

I do a lot of trail running on Colorado's Front Range, and incorporate quite a bit of scrambling into trail runs, including speed scrambling where I sprint up steep rock slabs (especially the 2nd Flatiron in Boulder). Last weekend, following a great run with some scrambling, I started to experience the onset of an injury, and I'm curious if anyone has any input or has had a similar experience:

• Saturday, I go on a great trailrun, 8 miles of running, about 1hr of steep scrambling, ~2500ft vert. That night, I mention to my girlfriend that my left big toe kinda hurts.
• Sunday, I'm limping a little bit, with my left big toe hurting a bit. It feels like I stubbed it or something. I go about my day as normal, but no running or climbing.
• Monday, I can hardly walk. Pain is mostly localized to the toe, but also starts to move a little to my forefoot. The foot is somewhat swollen.
• Tuesday, I go to urgent care, get an x-ray. Nothing obvious. The foot is very visibly swollen now, and often kind of a dark red or purple color compared to my other foot.
• Things get worse until Thursday, where it stabilizes, and now just causes a limp. It's easier to sleep at night, since little bumps don't cause shocks of pain. I can finally put a shoe on, but it hurts quite a bit just when pulling my big toe up just a bit to get the shoe on or off. It's still swollen if I've spent much time on it.

I'm hoping to talk to a PT, but this being Boulder, they're always swamped and don't have an appointment available for a few weeks. At the moment it does seem to slowly be improving, but pulling my toe up is still super painful, and I can't really curl it more than a cm or two down. To me, this seems like it might be "turf toe," which impacts athletes who hyper-extend their big toe, especially American football players. My thought is that perhaps scrambling up slab, which puts your toes in a similar position, could be the source of the injury, especially at high speeds. The strangest thing to me is that there was no moment where I felt I had hurt myself, and the injury came on over the course of several days.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, climbing community!

I've had a similar experience from climbing a high volume of hard slab. Sounds like yours is way worse than mine though, I never let it progress to where it felt acutely painful. I took a couple weeks off and only wore stiff shoes like Chacos. After that I taped my toe for a while and only climbed in TC Pros. I never went to the doctor for it though, so turf toe is a just a guess

I got what I think was turf toe also from weird scramble stuff and lots of running. I did see a podiatrist who took x rays and basically said "can't see any bone issues so just be soft tissue." I never got swelling, just the pain in the ball of the foot where the big toe connects. For turf toe, folks on this forum recommended lots of calf stretching which helped me with relief. I also was running on shoes that were past their prime so replacing them & having proper support helped as did reverting to my stiffer climbing shoes. There's other things that can be wrong in that part of the foot so keep in mind it could be something else, too, (sesamoid problems etc) if you're self-diagnosing! 

My understanding is that rehab for toe soft tissue injuries that do not require surgery usually involves using the stiffest possible shoes and then progressively going back to softer shoes (i.e., walking boot -> mountaineering boot -> stiff approach shoe -> running shoe / climbing shoe).  

I get the appeal of running up the flatirons as fast as possible in soft running shoes, but you might want to consider changing how you combine running and scrambling.  With a 12L running vest, it is pretty easy to carry a second pair of shoes for scrambling.  

From my experience it's a time battle. It will heal if you're good to it, but the hardest part is when it starts to feel better it's super easy to cause it to flare back up. That was the worst part for me. There's a reason it sidelines NFL players for quite a while. I remember wearing flip flops a lot. Really it's a rough soft tissue to recover, best of luck

Sorry to hear that Taylor. I'm dealing with a big toe issue too, though not sure if it's turf toe. I do think it happened after scrambling. My podiatrist suggested my shoes may have been past due for replacement and were too soft which lead to overstretching through the joint. I think they were probably due for a resole too, which meant I may have been overly pressing and stretching through the toe joint for more security.

After a single EPAT treatment it felt significantly better. Now I tape it and I'm climbing and scrambling in stiffer shoes for now. If you're in Boulder I'd highly recommend seeing Dr. Christina Weber at Boulder Valley Foot and Ankle. She's an athlete and understands the focus of getting back outside pain free. She's helped me with several issues now.

I had turf toe last year from running and yoga. I had Rolfing and dry needling done in it and that helped but it was just a lot of rest too.