Doctors, kinesio's, runners...I need HELP...

This is kinda lengthy…

I’ve been a runner for over 25 years, and always enjoyed it. While my knees are perhaps showing a bit of wear and tear, they really don’t bother me much at all.

But, over the last 5-6 years or so, I’ve been having a recurring problem with my right calf muscle. About midway across (laterally) my calf muscle, maybe 70% down the bulky, rounder calf muscle mass (but not in the narrower muscle that comes up from my ankle), I am constantly having a problem.

The problem starts like this. I gently stretch and loosen up, but I’ve always generally just gone out slow to get warmed up. I’ll be running along (or on the treadmill). I might be running for 5 minutes, or for 25 minutes. Things feel great - no pain, no tightness. Then within a couple of strides, I get a very sharp pain deep inside the muscle area that I tried to describe above. It feels like a nail has been pushed into the muscle - it’s painful and scary enough that it stops me dead in my tracks. Sometimes I get maybe a few strides warning, and if I pull up, it doesn’t slam me as hard, and I can then walk for a while and it subsides a little (but the run is definitely over). In the cases where it comes on suddenly, the run is over RIGHT NOW, and I end up with tightness and pain over at least several days that occasionally makes it difficult to walk down the stairs. It’s as though I’ve seriously strained some muscle deep down in the muscle mass. It can take 10-14 days to feel OK again. If I try to then go for a run - even an easy run - it might be OK for a few days, or it might start acting up right away. If I stop running for a month, it seems to go away, but always shows up again sooner or later.

This is really putting a hitch in my git-along. Granted, I used to weight about 175, and now I weigh about 215 (probably 20 pounds extra muscle from 4 years of weightlifting, and some fat that I’d like to run off).

What the heck is causing this injury? Am I just a little too heavy for my muscle structure to handle it? I haven’t been able to figure out a warmup/stretching routine that makes it better. When I used to run 5 days a week, I NEVER had a problem like this. I’ve also noticed that it sometimes occurs a bit lower inthe narrower part of the muscle maybe an inch or two down towards my ankle, but still up in or very near my calf.

Thoughts and opinions? I really love to run, but this is ruining it.

Thanks…

IANAMD, and you should see an orthopedist, especially one sports oriented. But it sounds to me that you strained a calf muscle and have never allowed it to heal properly. A strain is a tear of a muscle or tendon, and there are several grades, depending how extensive the tear is and how many fibers were torn. A severe strain will take several months to heal. If you’d give up running for several months, and indulge in swimming or biking, you may find that you once more can run without pain.

Could it possibly be a really bad cramp?

I get night time calf cramps that are almost unbearable and the calf is tight and in pain for 3-4 days afterwards. The first time I got it I screamed, rolled out of bed and hit my head on the night stand, the pain subsided but I limped for about a week.

My physician just ran my electrolytes and suggested I eat more potassium, which seems to help.

  • Groman

It sounds like a gastrocnemius muscle strain. Cramps caused by low levels of calcium, potassium and sodium are not usually isolated to times when you are running; nocturnal leg cramps are a different beast entirely. When is the last time you went six weeks without running?

i had the exact same problem… but in my shin… or right near it, along side it… lasted for damn near 4 years… only now do i not notice it… don’t know wut caused it… but seems only a really long time of rest is a cure :frowning:

Pains in the shins are usually caused by shinsplints, compartmental syndrome, or a stress fracture.

Shinsplints (medial tibial stress syndrome, posterior tibial syndrome, or tibial stress syndrome) is a bone injury localized to one or both of the calf bones (tibia and fibula). They develop through four stages of injury. In the first stage, vague discomfort, poorly localized somewhere in the calf, after exercise. As training continues, the discomfort comes on during exercise. If training continues without treatment, the pain becomes uncomfortable or impossible (Grade 3). It could then worsen into Grade 4, which is in fact a stress fracture.

In a stress fracture, the pain is bearable when at rest or walking, but becomes unbearable when running.

A compartmental syndrome is sometimes referred to as a “shinsplint,” but the true shinsplint is described above. In the compartmental syndrome, exercise causes an abnormal rise in pressure in one or more of the muscular compartments of the lower leg. Normally these compartments have sufficient space for the muscles to swell without causing any increase in pressure, but in some persons they do not. The resulting pressure increase may obstruct the blood flow to the muscles, causing them to be painful. At first the pain is mild and disappears rapidly as soon as running stops, but becomes progressively more severe and begins to interfere with running.

A true compartmental syndrome can be differentiated from shinsplints as follows:

(1) A CS causes pain localized to the muscles, not to the bones, of the leg.
(2) The pain usually gets worse after running.
(3) The injury never gets better even after months of rest (whereas after a few months of rest, the runner with shinsplints will usually be pain free until again reaching the breakdown training level).
(4) After running, the involved muscles become absolutely rock hard.
(5) There may also be changes in skin sensation and occasionally there will be severe muscle cramping.

(Source: Lore of Running Tim Noakes, Md.)