As requested I will go into a little bit more detail about my battle with plantar fasciitis.  The usual caveat applies here.  If you are having a problem it is always best to check with your physician.  Although I am a physician and occasionally play one on TV, I do not dispense medical advice via this blog.  I am just relaying my personal experience and what worked for me. 

My problem started a little less than a year ago.  If we want to play the blame game, credit goes to my buddy Barry.  I visited him in California and had a session with this ART guy that he recommended.  This fellow picked up on my tight IT band really quick and went to town on it.  He also said my feet were flat and I tended to pronate.  After I told him I was running in Nike Frees he told me I needed more support.  I immediately picked up a pair of Brooks and hit the streets.  I remember thinking, "man these things really put me on the balls of my feet".  My calves were feeling it.  A few weeks later, it was a Sunday, I thought I had stepped on a stone.  I kept looking for a bruise on my heel.  This continued to worsen until I asked my podiatrist friend about it.  Within 5 seconds I had my diagnosis.  Plantar fasciitis.  He gave me a script for some custom orthotics.  I never got them.  I talked to another buddy who actually makes orthotics and he told me it was a waste of time as far as plantar fasciitis was concerned.  He told me all I needed to know that day.  For whatever reason it didn't sink in.  His advice:  "stretch your damn calves".  That was all I needed to do but I wasn't doing it right.  So for the next several months I took a shotgun approach to my fasciitis.  I saw my massage therapist.  He got medieval on my feet and it hurt like hell and it pretty much cured it for about a week or two. Then it was back.  Classic PF, pain was worse in the morning with the first step or just after sitting for a while.  Not good.  I spend most of the day on my feet and the kettlebell sport training and attempts at running weren't helping. GS was out and so was running.  I spent a lot of time doing more strength training and I got more focused on my concept II rower.  One nice thing was I beat my 7 min goal on the 2000m row.  That's one goal knocked down for the year.  I also picked up a Strassburg sock for night time.  This helped quite a bit.  You can check that out here.  It took a little getting used to but I think it helped.
I also got some inserts for my shoes that I liked.  They were $20 per pair, way cheaper than custom orthotics.  Here is the link to the inserts.  I still keep them in my work shoes because they don't bother me and I am used to them.  Did they help?  Probably.  They certainly didn't make things worse. 

What really did the trick for me though was getting serious about the stretching.  I was using a weak approach where I would stretch them for 30 seconds or so and think that was enough.  WRONG!  You have to be serious about this.  Make it a religion.  First you have to do it for a longer period.  3-5 minutes at a time sounds about right.  Plus you have to do it often after gradually working up to the longer stretch.  I like three or more times a day.  I try to space them out, maybe a morning stretch, and early evening stretch or before I train and then again after I train or before bed.  You have to hold the stretch for a long time.  I also got serious about stretching the hamstrings as well.  Very important.  For a while it didn't seem to work but after a couple weeks I was able to get back to running and GS training with no setbacks.  If you want to know why this works look at the picture at the top of the page.  You can see the connection to the achilles tendon and the calf.  This entire myo-fascial system is in continuity and tightness one place will lead to downstream events.  The bottleneck happens to be at the plantar fascia where it attaches to the heel.  That's where the tension is.  If you don't fix this it keeps happening.  You rest the foot at night it starts to heal, you put weight on it in the morning, it tears again.  The cycle of inflammation and repair never ends.  The solution is to "stretch your damn calves".  I probably should also have done a month or so of NSAIDs when this started but I don't like taking medication, go figure. 

So what finally convinced me to get serious about fixing this problem.  I ordered the a video from this website.  It was an instant download and was the best $15 I ever spent.  All you need to know is right there. In addition to that I went back to my nike frees.  A few folks have recommended the vibram five fingers shoes.  I can't bring myself to wear them for they are hideous to look upon.  I am not saying never but definitely not right now.  There has been a lot of talk about barefoot running and recently a book was released entitled Born to Run (not to be confused with the Springsteen song).  It is about a tribe of indians who run and run and run and don't have the type of foot problems we have.  I haven't read it but I plan to.  You can get it here.  There is much speculation that our currently favored running shoes and other shoes for that matter basically act as casts preventing the intrinsic muscles of the feet from doing much of anything.  This in theory can lead to problems and lets face it, foot problems are terribly common.  I have at least 10 friends who are battling PF at present.  I hopefully have put them on the right path though.  We could go on and on discussing shoes, theory, and the like.  Rather than overindulge in such cerebral masturbation keep it simple and "stretch your damn calves".