Speed Bump

It’s simply part of marathon training. You can’t push the redline day after day or week after week without something giving. All you can do is damage control, and try to get back to training as quickly as possible.

Following a nice MGP/tempo run at the Lake Zurich Half, my goal was to push hard for two and a half final weeks with my training, then wind down for the final week and a half.

Unfortunately, my lower legs tightened up like mad after that half. It was a bit hilly, so I wasn’t totally shocked at the soreness. But something just didn’t seem quite right, especially in my right calf. The race was a Sunday, I went easy on Monday, then took Tuesday off to let it calm down. Then in my easy-AM run on Wednesday, something pulled in my final quarter mile of the run. It felt like it was dead in the middle of the right calf.

Without a doubt, this was caused by my dehydration in the last week.

In the end, it was merely a knot, and I’m incredibly lucky for that... but at the time, I was legitimately concerned that it was much worse. I took some aggressive steps right away for damage control. I booked a massage for later that day, I iced, I compressed it, I took some Motrin, etc.

The massage helped a ton – and likely got half of it out. It also helped to flush some of the crap from my lower legs, which let me focus on where the damage was actually located... deep at the intersection of the soleus and the gastroc. The calf certainly wasn’t ready to run though, and I was forced to keep nursing it and take two days off.

I continued with aggressive icing, compressing, and resting on both Thursday and Friday. Most importantly though, I tried Ream’s favorite trick several times a day, for 3 days in a row - laying my leg on a baseball to self-massage / roll the thing out. The knot finally let go and I was ready to run by Saturday, and picked up my long run yesterday. As of now, I think I'm in the clear.

The result of this stupid injury meant three donuts in a key peak week! Instead of running 100 miles, I wound up with 40.

On the plus side, I feel reasonably fresh again and can push for the next week+ to try to regain my position. My marathon isn’t busted yet, but it’s not going to be easy... and these fuckers don’t run themselves!