One leg longer than the other?! (Read 4456 times)

Here's something that I found a bit weird yesterday to add to the great stretching debate. I ran a 10 mile race a couple of weeks ago fairly hard (for me), and picked up a slight strain in my left hip. I rested about 10 days then started up again this week with a 4 mile followed by a 5 mile the next day. The hip strain reappeared but was nothing to particularly worry about, I concluded it was just tightness in the buttock muscle (gluteus ??) rather than anything in the hip itself and if i found a proper stretching routine it would help. So i got out of bed yesterday, stood on the bathroom scales and thought it felt strange when trying to stand straight - I was sure i was leaning to the right and my left leg felt like it was about an inch longer than the right ! The feeling's going away now and I've since run a 6 mile and incorporated some stretches for that area which seem to be helping. Interested to know if anyone else experienced anything similar? Cheers Davey

I've been dealing with something like this. In my case, according to my Sports Medicine/ Osteopath guy, my right hamstring is *very* tight. (I totally agree. It bothers me when I run sometimes.) The tight hamstring pulls on my hip which causes it to twist a little, throwing my lower back out of alignment and causing one leg to be a little shorter than the other and my hip bones to be noticeably different. Earlier I'd had 2 chiropractors tell me my legs were different lengths and sell me expensive inserrts for my shoes (which never helped at all. ) This DO workied his magic. Two visits and my back pain is gone. Legs measure the same. Hip bones even now. He said I might need to come back next year for another treatment, so we'll see. Right now I'm convinced. After the first visit, I slacked on my hamstring stretching and I could feel it go back. Another treatment and *actually* following doctors orders and all is good. Teresa

Interesting that others have had a similar problem then. So it looks like tightness in one side of the hip/leg muscles can cause twisting in the pelvis and a subsequent shortening of one leg. I'll have to be more careful than i first thought with this one i think, in case it flares into something more serious! Maybe I'm forcing my "Easy" runs a little too hard.

Another thought: is it possible the road you're running on has a pretty serious camber to it? As in, it's sloped pretty sharply?

Actually you may have hit the nail on the head there. In my training i was careful to swap sides of the road (to balance the camber between both legs), but this was at short distances of 3-6 miles. The 10 mile event was the first time i had run in the road itself instead of the pavement - and generally, in the UK at least, the roads have a much more pronounced camber than the pavements do. So i think the camber may then have been responsible for the initial strain. Since then (and finding this site!) I've been running new routes, and i haven't been paying as much attention to the camber as i did previously. I tested the camber out today on my 11 mile long run. When i ran on pavements sloping down to the left i was fine, but when i ran on pavements where the camber sloped down to the right after about 1/2 a mile i could feel the tension in my hip on the left side. I guess it could be that the leg is slightly longer as a result of the strain, or that the leg is naturally slightly longer and it's only as i increase the distance i'm running that it became apparent. Either way, it looks like I should stick to a camber sloping down to the left for a while. Time will tell !!! Cheers D