Calf Heart Attack

 I can be obsessive about things.  I admit it.  The discomfort I've been having with my right calf hasn't been terrible.  It's more been like a nagging injury that I've been  worried would become more chronic and serious if I didn't tend to it right away.  The discomfort has continued to resurface at times despite my attempts to do what I thought was right and lay off it for awhile to let it heal.

It made it's presence known again during last weekend's half marathon, almost predictably at around the 6-mile mark, or 45 minutes into the run.  Why is this taking so long to recover from?

One of the things that has bugged me is that I didn't feel as though I really suffered a muscle tear or strain in the traditional sense when I first felt the pain.  It came about relatively gradually during the 6th mile of a 10-mile slow and easy training run.  There was no "pop" or sudden jolt of pain.  It felt more like a cramp, which I was able to run through and finish the 10 miles.  No bruising.  No swelling.  Not really any debilitation either.  The muscle stiffened up over night, but I was able to kneed it out and warm it up and had no problem with my runs over the next few days.  That doesn't sound like a muscle strain/pull to me.

But, about 4 days later, I did experience the more typical muscle-pull injury.  It wasn't during exercise, but rather simply flared up when I took a quick step to try to catch a train/trolley before the doors closed.  Yes, that was searing pain, and I wound up limping for the next several hours, unable to put weight on the ball of my foot.

Since then, I've not reinjured the muscle in that way and have taken great care to give it a chance to heal.  Despite that, including long periods of forced no-running, the muscle will still start to tighten up or feel knotted and painful -- but not always -- and usually only after about 20-40 minutes of exercise.  In fact, it was more likely to occur during lighter runs than hard ones, but looking at it now, it may have had more correlation to duration rather than intensity.

Not satisfied that I had a typical type 2 muscle strain, I kept looking around and chanced upon this article:

Calf Heart Attack

I think it's describing almost exactly what I've been experiencing, and offers a rational-sounding explanation for what is happening.  Here's another related article: The Knotted Calf and What To Do About It

I've been stretching the muscle thinking that would be remedial, but apparently not so.  I need to let it heal first and THEN use stretching to help prevent a reoccurrence. I have just a few weeks before I wanted to starting working on my mileage again and also building some 5K speed.  I'll try to apply the guidance above and get this "calf heart attack" under control.