It seemed like an innocuous little session, just about about 4 miles with 4 quick bursts of about 600m. Just after the fourth I felt a slight pull in the left calf muscle. This felt more serious after the half mile climb back to the farm. When evening came it had tightened up considerably and was now rather painful. For the run I’d been wearing Inov-8s excellent f-light 230; more about these in a future post.
I guess the extra load on the calf from the speed, together with the lower heel of the f-lites had created a a tension that was just too much. It’s very strange though, as I said it seemed innocuous enough and the session was not one that was anything too out of the ordinary for me. Calf muscles are like that though, they seem to react in quite unpredictable ways, and people I talk to echo this notion.
With three and a half weeks to go before Paris Marathon, it was not good timing; the day after I had a 20 miler planned and didn’t really want to postpone that for too long. Nevertheless, after a short aborted run in place of the long one I knew the only sensible option was to rest it for a few days.
After 4 days rest it was feeling much better and I attempted a rescheduled long run. It was a little sore from the outset, but didn’t seem to get much worse throughout the run and I was pleased and relieved to have bagged the final long run for the marathon. Unsurprisingly, some time after that run the calf muscle did protest and so again I opted for some more rest.
Today’s run — all on the flat — started as a bit of a test to see how it was recovering and I didn’t venture far from the farm in case I had to walk back. Seemingly, it is recovering well because I ran more than 6.5 miles without any pain at all. As I said, these calf muscles don’t appear to follow any rules. Some hours later it’s tightened a little, but I am confident it will cope with a half marathon race in 3 day’s time on Sunday.
The lesson? If in doubt, rest is best. It’s been hard because I’m already on a much-truncated marathon schedule and really didn’t want a light week at this point. But, getting to the start line is priority; I’ll worry about the rest of it after that!
In view of the above, running barefoot at the moment is a strict no.
Last 2 weeks total miles: 50
Barefoot miles: 1.5
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