Tight/Sore calves out of the blue (Read 129 times)

Hi!  I haven't posted for a while.  I kind of fell out of running for a month or more in January and have trying to slowly build back up to some decent mileage.  This weekend I have my first half-marathon in about a year, so I'm in taper mode.

Last week on a few runs my calves started to get really sore and tight early in the run.  It feels exactly like it felt when I was trying to get my body acquainted with zero drop shoes, but I'm running in shoes and inserts that are well broken in.  I've been running in these same shoes for a few months and haven't had any problems until now.  I gave them a good massage a few days later and it got better for a few days and then last night the same thing happened.  My slow, easy 3 mile run was not easy at all.  Calves were super tight again and it made even completing the short slow run difficult.  I bet you can guess that I am worried about my half-marathon this weekend.  If I get sore calves early in the race it's not going to be fun.  It's going to suck, in fact.

What could be going on?  My equipment hasn't changed and suddenly an issue pops up out of the blue.  I'm racking my brain but can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

More importantly, do you have an advice on how I can alleviate the pain and make sure it doesn't happen on race day?

Thanks for your input!

What is going on is you are running, and that makes things happen to your body. Don't running injuries always come out of the blue?

I'm sure you will get a variety of responses. Do you do any stretching? (A controversial subject here.) You might try making the first ~1 mile of each run a very slow warmup, then stop and stretch, then resume the run. Also stretch after the run. If that does help - at your race, do the same routine, but of course the warmup jog before the race starts. For longer term improvement, a lot of people find strengthening them with eccentric heel drops to be helpful.

Good luck.

Great article, Tom.  Thanks!  I'm going to try that along with some stretching after a warm up as Dave advised.  I ramped up my mileage pretty quickly in the last month or so.  Probably a bit too fast and now I'm paying the price in my calves.

 

I went for another 3 miler today at lunch and it was a little better.  The calves did tighten up, but I stopped at a couple of stoplights and tried to stretch them out really good.  After each stretch they felt immensely better for a few minutes.  I'll do lots of stretching and massaging before the race and very little (if any) running.

 

Race morning I'll do a warmup up and then a really good stretch.  Hope I can get the kinks worked out for at least one day.

 

Thanks for your advices!

With your issues, I would be really careful about not statically stretching your calves before your runs. I tried that once and it  backfired on me. Since my entire calf was tight, it causes repeated pulling of the achilles where it attaches to the heal, and it resulted in the early stages of  Haglands's Deformity ("pump bump") and an inflamed bursa at the back of my heal.  That was very painful. Now, I do static calf stretching before and after every run (heel drops while standing on steps), in addition to the massaging the article talks about. I haven't had calf issues in a couple years.

Yes, in general, I know that static stretching is frowned upon, but I think if you have special areas that need to be addressed, you need to target those areas until they aren't problems anymore.

Good luck!

It might sound weird, but I was having problems with my calves also, they would  get very sore,hard and almost feel like they were burning. (according to Dr. Google I thought I had compartment syndrome but luckily he was wrong) Stretching would not help. I've had this happen twice for a week or two at a time and both times was toward the end of a training cycle.

I figured out my problem was taking Advil  for a pinched nerve I had in my neck was screwing up my calves.

Do you have any pain when you do not run?

I have a similar problem. My both calves hurt when I do not run. During a run, they are mainly fine. But 5-6 hours after a workout, I have that dull pain in both of them. And it can last for hours. When I wake up in the morning I am fine, but as soon as I stand for 10-15 minutes, that dull pain is back.

If I go to see my chiropractor, he applies electrical stimulation therapy and that helps. After that I am fine for a couple days.

It does not stop me for running, but I am starting to get worried.