Soleus Status

I don't want to jinx anything, but I think fortunately, I was a little quick to panic about the pain in my calf.  I can't say it's all better, but I think it's healing. 

I had initially thought it was pain in my groin or hamstring, and then it felt like it was in my Achilles, and then I thought gastroc.  But by the time I went to the doctor this past Monday, it was pretty clear it was the soleus.  That's part of the quick-fire muscles in your calves.  But there were certain points on my lower calf that hurt like crazy when I put the slightest bit of pressure on the area. 

Here's a picture!  Trying to copy this from webanswersmd.com. 



The pain for me is on the inside part of the back of my calf, but you can see it lays under the Achilles and runs up under the gastroc.  For me, it was in the lower calf, on the inside of the Achilles. 

Here's another pic, which does a better job of showing all that's down there (copied from redsamy.com):



That one shows the peroneus longus too, which gave me problems about a year ago?  All you ever wanted to know about your calf! 

I seem to remember deciding I was going to do calf raises in the shower most days to try to build up my calf muscles a bit more, but somehow that has fallen by the wayside.  And now another calf injury!  Guess I should open my eyes and start doing those calf raises again and stick with it for the next couple decades! 

Anyway, on the advice of my ortho's PA, I've cut my mileage down a lot (well, I did that on my own), and I've been pretty good about icing and wearing my compression sleeve too (and actually, I was doing both of those things before I went to the doc too).  And I'm wearing those stupid heel lifts things when I run, even though they kind of hurt the bottoms of both feet in a blister-developing way, but no actual blisters so far.  Those heel lifts or the simple passage of time (and decreased mileage, ice, compression) may be working.  Yesterday afternoon I realized the calf area that was so bad is now not so tender to the touch anymore. 

I'm going to keep being cautious, but I feel like I'm making progress.  But I think there's not a 5k in my future in a couple weeks, which was where I was leaning.  I'd have to be ready to "bring it" in order to get a new PR in a 5k, and I just don't think that's realistic or smart at this point, so maybe I'll do the 10k.  But even that's uncertain, I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed!  At the 10k distance, it wouldn't be such a stretch for me to get a PR, but I still think that's unlikely, but at least I'll get a solid 6 miles in for the day.  My 10k room has a lot of room for improvement, my 5k PR just doesn't -- I can and will improve, but I'm not longer even hoping for full minutes, I'd be happy trimming 30 seconds at this point. 

I'm so glad my calf is feeling better.  My husband has been giving me all kinds of grief about continuing to run on it.  I think he may have been part of the reason I made the doc appointment.  Not that he's a doctor or anything, but he didn't think I should keep running and I didn't do a good job of explaining to him how much I was cutting my mileage.  So he basically said if I was going to keep running, he didn't want to listen to me complaining about how much my calf hurt. 

This is what my miles have looked like the last few weeks: 

BC means Boot Camp, so weights, core work, other random exercises, some cardio.

Not sure if that picture will be legible, but suffice it to say that after several weeks of holding in the 43-47 miles per week range, after a week with some pain in various parts of my left leg, I cut my miles last week to about 30, and this week will probably be about the same.   I will probably try to stay low 30s for next week as well, and if things are even better by the time I get to Chicago, then I'll aim to climb back up into the 40s! 

That's the calf status update for you!