pain...constant and dull (Read 911 times)

aches are normal.  true pain is not.  but then constant and dull makes me think more of an "ache" then pain, which for me is occasional and sharp. 

 

pain is telling you something is wrong in some way.  aches are telling you that you are not 18 anymore. 

 

at least that is my very general philosophy.  When I stretch or groan about something my wife hints at worries about running making me hurt.  I usually replay that every 40 year old man I know has some ache or other once in a while.  And I'd rather my aches be from running 12 miles then from hitting a golf ball or playing softball. 

 I always look at it as aches also telling you that you've worked an area a little harder than you're used to, which isn't a bad thing.

Could be overtraining.  Life stress certainly affects how much physical training/stress we can handle.  You mentioned two biggies: 1) turning 30 (stressful for many!) and 2) planning a wedding.  Perhaps you just need to chill for a week or two, taking it easy on the miles as well as the pace.

MTA: looking at your log, it seems that you've been doing doubles on all your harder training days - the intervals, the races, the tempo runs.  That certainly adds to training stress, perhaps unnecessarily so.  Doing a double is a kind of stress too - perhaps those might be better off moved to an easy day and let the harder workout stand on its own?  Just a thought - I don't do any of the hard stuff so there might be others better qualified to advise.

I've been running consistently for 7 years, and this year, more than ever, I've noticed that I'm ALWAYS hurting one way or another.  It's usually something in my legs that's bothering me, either quads, calves, or hams.  Every now and then it's the IT band.  Always something.  What's changed for me this year?  Well, I turned 30 a few weeks back.  And I'm planning my wedding, so there's a little bit of new stress to deal with.  Those are the two things that I can think that could negatively effect my running.  On the positive side, in the past I've always pretty much done all my runs at an 8 minute pace, and this year I've slowed things down a bit for my easy runs and am usually somewhere between 8:30 and 8:45 pace.  I just started logging my runs on here a few months back, check it out. 

 

I'm really starting to get sick of the constant pain.  I'm wondering if the pain is normal or if maybe there's something going on with me. What does everyone think?

I am assuming you are a female as you are planning a wedding. Ha! I am curious. Have you ever done a 5K or 10K race? I am curious of your fitness and whether your runs are too fast/hard without adequate recovery. You are still young. It really is not normal to be hurting unless training too hard or you have a biomechanical issue, muscle weakness/imbalance or bad shoes. A 8 min comfortable pace correlates to a sub 20 min 5K which will win many 5K races for females. Of course you can train harder some days but if you were running this fast everyday, it would break you down.