Last Tuesday's run was a good 3.8 miles until near the end when my left calf cramped up, about halfway up the leg, where the calf bulges. I had to stop and massage a bit but continued running very slowly the rest of the way. Did more massaging the next few days and by Friday it seemed all better but started acting up again as soon as I set out. I finished the run, about 2 miles, but had to do it with slower, shorter steps, and with more stopping to massage. All I could figure is that I must have not been relaxing my foot enough. Over the weekend I mostly just relaxed it and massaged a little. Any time I tried to work it though would be painful and pressing and rubbing, like with trigger point, just seemed to make it worse.
Finally on Sunday I did some slow stretches and that seemed to help a lot and really quickly, too. It makes me wonder--I've been reading a lot how on the BRS site that stretches are bad and so I've eased off doing them as much before running--could that be part of the problem? Do I need to stretch to loosen up and be relaxed?
So I did my usual stretching this morning and tried a very short run, about 1000 feet, just to see how thing were. It was still a little tight, but getting better. I might have been able to run a few miles with no problem but didn't want to overdo it. I'll try in the morning again if it's not too wet and rainy. Right now the calf feels totally better. Moo-oo.
According to Wikipedia, it is well known that monkeys have no calves and that that was once considered a sign of their inferiority. I'll try to remember my superiority the next time I overdo things.
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