Another cramping post... (Read 501 times)

I know there have been a couple of questions about how to deal with side cramping lately and the consensus seems to be to focus on your breathing, exhale deeply, etc and as you run more it the less it will happen. Well, I am having the opposite problem. I've been running for years, and never really had problems with stomach/side cramping. But for the past 2 months, at least half, sometimes all of my runs have had side cramping. It's usually on the right, but sometimes on the left. Sometimes it's mild and I can run through it by focusing on the breathing techniques, or massaging it out a little. Other times it comes on suddenly and there is nothing that helps it except for walking, and even then sometimes it comes back right after I start running again. I've tried varying terrain, pace, shoes, eating and drinking before/during a run, but nothing seems to help. Today's run was awful, even when slowing down to a walk it still hurt to keep moving forward and I had to cut the run short. Is there anyone out there who has any other ideas? Anybody dealt with persistant cramping like this?

What you're describing sounds like a stitch. I've had them at times. Here's one article that talks about them. Here's been my experience with side stitches: 1. They tend to happen for me if run with too much water in my stomach and I'm breathing heavily. So 90% of the time when I've gotten a stitch, it's been in a race in hot weather when I was trying to drink water while running pretty quickly. 2. Once I get a stitch, it tends to come back on almost every run for a week or several weeks after--I think it just takes time to heal and it's one of those things that you can only feel when running. I can sometimes muscle through it by tightening my abs while running, but that's a short term solution. Basically whe I just have to do a lot of short easy jogs that don't elevate my breathing for a while until it goes away.