Aches and pains of starting back...

My first couple of runs were good. My legs felt good, I was excited to be running again, and I knew that my seemingly decreased lung capacity/fitness would return.

By my third run, I was feeling a weird ache in the top of my calf, wrapping around to the front of my knee on my left leg. The pain wasn't severe, but it was strong enough to cause a definite weakness in my left knee. I felt, several times, like my leg was going to buckle as I ran. I vaguely remember something like this bugging me the last time I took an extended rest, so I looked back in my running log. There it was: third run, left leg, almost the exact same description as this time. It didn't look like it bothered me more than a couple days last time, and didn't seem too serious then, so I was hopeful.

Then I went out for a long-ish run on Sunday with my friend, G. He's the doctor guy I've mentioned before -- my friend who ran PDR with me. Anyway, I told him about my weakness/pain issue, and he felt the back of my leg/knee area and pushed and prodded and then told me about some bursa-fluid-somethingorother thing that was probably inflamed and causing one of my tendons to track incorrectly. Or something like that.

We had a good run, but I had to stop a couple times because the pain and weakness would take over. It got pretty bad. Way worse than the last time around. Once I stopped for a second and massaged the area a little, the pain went away and I was able to run again for a bit. Then it would happen again. G wasn't pleased with me that I wanted to finish the run, but I think by now he's used to my stubbornness...

He sent me these pictures to try to explain:

See those blue things? That's what he said is probably the issue. The fluid-filled bursa things. The top pic was how he explained how the tendons attached to muscles and wrapped around the knee. Or something like that. He also described the back of my knee area as "gristly" and I think he even used the words "eww" and "gross." I questioned his medical knowledge with those terms, but nonetheless, I listened to his advice.

He suggested wearing some type of compression sleeve when I'm not running to promote the blood flow. Motrin to reduce inflamation. Light massage to work the bursa thingies. Take the next few runs easy.

I did all of that. My next run, yesterday, was a super easy 3.5 miles with the Fitness Club kids, and then today I got out for a strong 5 miler. Both runs were good. I've worn the sleeve to work both days and in today's run I had no weakness or pain at all. I even had to push the pace a little today because I snuck out on my lunch hour, but the run ended up being super.

So maybe G does know what he's talking about.