My calves are cranky
Well, this is becoming an injury filled year.
First, a stress reaction in my pelvis caused me to miss about 5 weeks of running.
Now, my calves hurt. I guess the scientific word for the body part that aches is my soleus. In both legs. The pain is bad. Real bad. It used to go away after a mile or two of running. Now, it never goes away. And now the pain is so intense that I missed two runs last week, including a planned 14-miler on Saturday. (I cut that run short after half a mile when my pace got no faster than 11:30 min/mile because I was wincing with each step.)
When I start missing long runs, that’s not a good thing.
The culprits for my calf pain are the Saucony Kinvaras I bought last month. They are a virtual zero-drop, minimalist shoe. I was supposed to ease my way into those shoes, but being hard-headed, I put 55 miles on them the first week out of the box, including a 20-miler. That’s way too much stress too fast to put on calf muscles that were used to running in thick-heeled running shoes for much of the past 7 years.
At first, the pain and stiffness was manageable. It is then when I should have been much more religious about R-I-C-E (rest, ice, compression, elevation). Yet I did nothing, and even increased my mileage and speed.
Now.. blink… I’m laid up and even though I’m now icing two or three times a day, it’s too late.
No running until the pain goes away. I’m not sure what this means for my Dallas White Rock Lake marathon, which isn’t until Dec. 4. I’m what you call an experienced marathoner and so if this injury only caused me to miss a week of training, I’d probably still run White Rock.
But if I have to miss any more time than that, I’ll have to bail.
Boo.
(And it’s nobody’s fault but mine!)
Get 5ksandcabernets
Hi ! knee is part of the body vulnerable to pain and a scary thing for runners, to prevent it by doing a good stretch.
Oh no! That is such a bummer! I have heard of a lot of people end of with sore calves after switching too fast to low heel drop shoes. I would guess that if you take a couple of days completely off, keep icing, and go back to your regular shoes that you won’t miss too much time. LOTS of gentle stretching too. Then once there is zero pain at all when you run in your regular shoes, you can use the Kinvara’s for speed workouts or racing and should be ok. Hang in there! Hope you are feeling better asap so you don’t have to miss your race. For what it’s worth, I missed just over an entire week and had to take it super easy/short for another week with a sore achilles and I was still fine to run my marathon in Sept.
Good luck!
Erin recently posted..big numbers!
A few Airrosti treatments might help.
“if this injury only caused me to miss a week of training, I’d probably still run White Rock. But if I have to miss any more time than that, I’ll have to bail.”
If you want it bad enough, get an aqua running belt and hop in the pool, or go do spin classes to not lose fitness. Like Erin said, 1 week is nothing, in fact, 2 weeks is not a big deal, you’ll feel a little groggy the return week, but within no time, the legs will be back.
And stop experimenting with so many shoes, or we’ll have to remove the “experienced marathoner” tag and lump you in the “dumbass-rookie” category. Instead, donate all those Benjamins to Bastrop fire recovery instead. Seriously, this isn’t basketball… it’s NOT the shoes that make the runner. Find 2 pairs that work (short race and long running) and stick to them!
: )
Now heel up and get out there, but for Pete’s sake, don’t give up on Dallas until Thanksgiving when “eating too much” is the “dumbass-rookie” excuse that one can blame it on! ; )
I hope it gets better! At least you are taking sensible steps to fix the problem. I am working to improve my gait a bit (or rather become more conscious of heel striking) and I hope that I don’t cause myself any problems. I have not taken the step towards any kind of minimalist/low heel drop shoe because the proper break in process seems to take so long!
Oh – and you run so much mileage that I don’t see how you could not run the marathon even if you were laid up for a few weeks. You might not PR or run at your usual pace but I would bet you are more than fit enough to handle 26.2 miles.
keyalus recently posted..Something’s Afoot
Ditto for everyone so far!! Please, please take care!!
Experience is a great teacher and it taught you a lot on the precautions you should take when running. I agree about the shoes being a big factor on the uneasiness. I always make sure that my shoes are comfortable since they greatly affect my performance in each of my activities.
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