Pain

I thought I'd conquered the problem I had last year with my calves - I'm really careful about warming up and stretching, then if they start to feel tight I pause in my workout to stretch some more, then I always do post-workout stretching. And the pain this season, so far, had been minimal. Even had a few workouts with none at all.

But about a week ago it came back. I had a treadmill session that was just awful - had to stop every few minutes to stretch, and finally gave up altogether. There was serious tightness and some pain, and stretching just wasn't taking care of it. The thing is, as soon as I stop the workout it goes away, so it's easy to forget about it.

Until tonight.

I went out on this beautiful evening to get in a nice long run. My doctor gave me a bunch of great training tips yesterday and I was eager to try them out.

Within 50 yards of just walking I knew something was wrong - my calves felt worse than they ever had. I stretched a lot, but within seconds the tightness came back. I kept walking short bits then pausing to stretch, which usually does the trick, but I just couldn't shake it. I tried jogging a while, and the pain seemed less then, but as soon as I had to slow down to a walk or to pause to stretch them it flared out of control. Within a mile I was limping, scared, and starting to cry. The pain was that intense.

I clearly had to abort the workout, but at that point was stuck a mile up the trail. There was nothing for it but to run back. The pain was least severe when jogging; walking made it triple and standing still added a burning, throbbing element that actually made me say bad things out loud.

I haven't felt pain like this in any voluntary activity in my life - one bad surgical recovery came close (but that was worse, because nothing made it stop hurting for a week). It truly brought tears to my eyes, and I could not believe I was out on the shady dirt trail on a gorgeous 73 degree day, crying from intense pain.

Then I was also crying from frustration. If my legs hurt, I should lay off running and swim. But I can't swim because my shoulder is injured. I've got a race in 10 days and I can't fucking prepare for it and I can't bring myself (yet) to pull the trigger and opt out. It would be an easier decision if I didn't have someone expecting me to race with them.

I'm in the process of trying to schedule a massage. I hope to hell it does some good.