Calf Pain - HELP (Read 1063 times)

I made a very big mistake this week. A co-worker asked me to go with her to a step aerobics class on Saturday morning at 8am. Sure! Sounds fun. So I went and it was TOUGH. I've never done step before and by the end I was wiped out. I was a little sore, but felt like I had a great workout. It was my scheduled day to run C25K week 4 run 3 and I figured I'd be up for it no problem. Spent the day with my family which included taking our son to the transportation museum and a LOT of walking. I was a little sore but nothing major. Dropped the little one off at mother-in-law's house for the night and went home. My husband was going to go running with me. We left around 7pm and did a different route than I usually do. I normally run a flat circuit around a school parking lot or on an indoor track at the local rec center. This time we ran through the neighborhood which involves quite a few hills. By the end I could tell my pace was slower than usual (not by a large margin though - only about a tenth of a mile less than my other week 4 runs) and I was definitely tired. But still nothing major...or so I thought. Came home, changed clothes, sat down in front of the computer to log the run. When I tried to stand up, my legs declared a revolution against my body. My calves are in AGONY. All day yesterday (Sunday) I was in misery. I can barely walk or move. I am following the RICE method to treat my legs and that seems to be helping, but today I am still incredibly sore. My question is how long should I let my legs recover before I try to continue my training program? Should I start with week 5 or should I go back and try to do week 4 again if I miss a week of running? If I can't run for several days/week what type of cross training is it safe to do to keep from regressing? I feel like an idiot that I went running because I didn't want to miss a day despite a little voice in my head telling me I should let my body rest after the step class and now I am probably going to miss more running because of that decision. UGH! Thanks for any advice =) Steph

Seriously though, it sounds like you probably just strained them. The new activity of step aerobics coupled with the already newly aquired activity of running, was probably a little more in one day than they liked

Yep - I agree, based on the above info. Sounds like standard "I over did it" type stuff. Provided the muscles aren't "pulled", a massage might go along way toward working the soreness out. Careful running though, you may want to take a couple days off, pick up where you left off. Just listen to your body. Regardless of what you choose, best of luck and hang in there.

Thanks for the tips! I have been doing ice 4x a day and had my husband use the rolling pin on my legs last night (my 3 year old was intrigued!) and this morning I feel a thousand times better. Still sore a little bit, but nothing like the agony of the past two days. I have a pilates class today that I think will be fine and then plan to take off running until I can walk without pain. Hopefully by this weekend I'll be ready to resume. Steph

Well at the 1 week mark of my insanity last Saturday, I went running. I decided to repeat a C25K week 4 run today with the plan to resume with week 5 next week. That way I'm only 1 week behind in my training. Today went well. No pain in my calves - hooray! It was colder out than I'm used to (21 degrees F) and I decided to run in a park (since it's day light and normally I'm running at night or indoors) so it was a hillier track than usual, but I still managed to keep up to my prior week 4 pace. WHEW. I'm excited to get back on track. Thanks for all the tips and encouragement Steph