While running I somehow hurt both my calf muscles. I think I may have tendinitis. Basically, when I go running distances greater than a mile, or run at a hard/fast pace, my calf muscles get sore and start to hurt for the rest of my run or until I start walking. It started months ago, so I stopped running for a while, however when I started up again recently, so did my calf pain. This might be important to point out, I only have calf pain when I’m running, when I’m done they feel tight for a little while but then the pain goes completely away until I go running again. Lastly, My calf muscles usually feel irritated when I stretch them.
Is this tendinitis? if not what is it?
What can I do to fix myself?
When I have this problem, I eat more bananas. I get these pains, not on the thick part of my calf, but on the outside (stabilizing) muscles when I start wearing my rugby boots at the beginning of a season. I think it’s because I don’t have enough potassium in my system.
If your calf muscles are hurting, but not your tendons, why are you thinking it’s tendinitis? I have a torn Achilles tendon, and believe me, there’s no doubt.
Sounds to me like you’re trying to run up on your toes. Have someone watch you run and watch your footplant. Most runners land heel first. Don’t overstride to achieve that heelfirst landing, that will result in a whole 'nother set of problems.
I have this problem sometimes. Someone once suggested it’s because I have short Achilles tendons. Who knows?
Yoga helps a lot because it keeps things loose down there generally. I find Downward Dog is the best pose for my calves. These ones work too, doing them before/after a run is key but I do them at other times too:
Stand on a step with your toes (with your heels sticking over the edge), and slowly flex your feet up and down through the full range of motion. Do it with your ankles in different positions (e.g. point your toes) to reach different parts of the muscle. (You can even do this one on a curb in the middle of a run, if you have a cramp.)
Stand very close to a wall, facing it. Put your toes up against the wall with your foot on the floor (you have to do this one foot at a time!). Gently press down with your foot and lean into the wall to stretch your calf out.
Well, I generally eat two bananas before every workout and stretch for around 20 minutes before any workout. I do stretches that just stretch my calves such as the foot against the wall pressing into the wall and a stretch where I put my foot half off of a stair and press my heel down. Both stretches feel great before and after a run, but when I’m running I still get the tightness and pain.
However maybe I am running too much on my toes sometimes. I will try to run with a focus on having my heel touch the ground as well as my toes. Thanks!
I second Runner Pat’s nomination of toe running as a probable cause of your calf pains. Also, if you’re starting up running after a layoff, you’re going to be prone to injury at first. Take things slowly and add mileage very conservatively because your brain will think your body can do more than it actually can. Do some muscle training and strengthening exercises in addition to running.
A couple of things I’d like to point out about the footstrike article linked above is that when they did the Pose study, all of the participants were cautioned to drastically reduce their mileage after changing their running technique to prevent injury. It’s very doubtful that they followed Romanov’s advice and — no surprise — a few of them turned up with exactly the kind of injuries you’d expect if they added mileage too fast without building up strength in the necessary muscles and connective tissue.
While there’s little doubt about what the research camera showed in the running study, I would lay a large bet that if you asked the same group of runners to run without shoes they would all be landing on their mid-foot within a couple of kilometers, and that any remaining heel-strikers would pull up with injuries before the end of the race. Shoes with any kind of rigid sole are very recent inventions, and running shoes with cushioning and support devices are only about a generation old. People were running for millions of years without shoes. I’m pretty sure that if we needed shoes to run fast and injury-free we would have died out. Just because you can get away with a heel-strike landing in shoes doesn’t mean you should.
Here’s an article on the research (and lack thereof) relating to barefoot running, including some information on comparative injury rates, with references.