My lower leg injury - sporting the one-calf-guard-on-one-calf-guard-off look

Looking back over recent blog articles and entries in my training diary, I noticed quite how often I've been mentioning the problems with my right lower leg. So I thought I'd devote a whole article to talking about what's been going on and what I've been doing about it.

It started on day 2 of our Isle of Wight run. Early on in the day, before I was properly warmed up, I suddenly experienced an intense muscular sensation in the top right of my right calf. It was totally different to any injury I'd had before.

Looking back I'm 99% sure that the cause of the injury was a long steepish descent at the end of the first day. The hill also sloped off towards the sea so it was a really awkward camber to be running on. The lack of training in my legs probably meant I was too fatigued after 35 miles of running to stabilise my leg effectively on that downhill.

Something I did on the Isle of Wight (and which I've done on long training sessions ever since) is put a Compressport calf guard onto the offending leg. I've worn these for recovery for years and swear by them. They're a great fit and seamless which means they don't rub / leave unsightly lines in my legs like other brands I've tried. I also find that compression gear massively speeds up my recovery - something pretty key with the amount of running I'm doing. I mentioned it previously in this article on the Transalpine.

I've not tended to actually run in compression gear though. To be honest this is largely cos I overheat and so in the summer I don't want to cover up my legs, I'd rather feel the air on them keeping me cool! But this summer I've been sporting a fetching one-calf-guard-on-one-calf-guard-off look. I've not overheated and the calf guard has kept my offending right calf warm and supported.

Finish line of The RAT - the one-calf-guard-on-one-calf-guard-off look

The other thing that's made a big difference while running is focusing on relaxing. I'm a big fan of the Chi Running technique and I see this as the main reason I've managed to up my training mileage so much and take on ultra marathons. When I completely relax my lower body (except my core obviously!) and remove absolutely any hint of tension from my right lower leg by just picking up my foot rather than pushing off with it then I get no pain at all.

In terms of recovery, I've been using all my tried and trusted methods. I've been seeing Martin for regular sports massage, particularly focusing on my glutes and then the band down my right itb / quad and into my calf. Charles has been using acupuncture to get deeper into the muscles of my right glute and leg to release specific areas of tightness / muscle spasm. And I've been seeing Paddy for osteo treatment. I've got a twist in my pelvis which he straightens out. He's also been doing a lot of work on releasing tightness in my lower right leg - it looks like the location of the pain is where everything feeds into the top of the fibula and that this has become all gummed up. So Paddy's been manipulating my leg to get everything moving smoothly again.

When I headed down to Cornwall for The RAT, the good people at MudCrew were good enough to put me in touch with Tim Saunders in Liskeard who gave me a couple of sessions of shockwave treatment which seemed to work a treat at reducing inflammation and releasing unhappy muscles / soft tissues. I'm going to see if I can find someone nearer home who offers this...

On more of a DIY front, I've been doing all the usual - stretching, loosening exercises for joints, rolling, glute trigger point release with a tennis ball and using hot wheat packs. Paddy's also given me an exercise where I lie on a couple of strategically placed books to realign my hips.

I've got a couple of marathon distance races lined up in the next couple of months but I'm keeping my mileages pretty low at the moment and just letting my body recover. It feels like I'm gradually improving so fingers crossed that the second half of the year will be injury free...

Night running / LED Lenser review

The RAT was the first time I'd raced in the dark. And I've done very little running in the dark full stop. This made me a bit nervous going into the race but there wasn't a huge amount I could do about it given that the race was in August - training in the dark would have meant missing out on sleep and I decided that sleep (and so not risking getting sick) was more important.

As a member of the Trail Running Team I was lucky enough to be given a LED Lenser head torch. And I'd had the chance to practise using it when we were out in the Alps in June. I was really pleased about this as it meant I knew what I could expect from the torch and that definitely gave me confidence. In the Alps, I had felt comfortable running up and down technical Alpine trails. And so I was fairly certain I'd be ok on the Cornish coastal footpath.

I was more nervous about navigating in the dark. Whilst the race was on a well-marked long distance trail, my experience (e.g. Our trip to the Isle of Wight) has taught me that this doesn't always mean you can get away without knowing the route. We bought a map and spent the days before the race recce-ing the tricky bits - mainly when the route passed through villages. This wasn't the best option but it had to do as we couldn't head all the way to Cornwall twice and we couldn't run the whole 50k (it was a there-and-back route so that would be sufficient for recognising the whole 100k route) in the days running up to the race when we needed to be resting.

So when I stood on the start line at midnight I felt pretty  comfortable with what lay ahead.

The LED Lenser head torch was really impressive. It lit up the path brilliantly and I felt I could run in pretty much the same way as during daylight. In reality, I probably wasn't quite as fast but that's not exactly a bad thing at the beginning of a 100k race! About 30 mins in I realised that the torch was a bit tight and was pressing on my head. But I was able to adjust the strap while it was on my head and I kept on moving while I did this. It was easy to change the direction of the beam (helpful on steep downhills or uphills) and its brightness.

My one problem was my batteries running out. But this was my fault - I hadn't put in new batteries for the race and dawn was about 2 hours later than I'd expected. So the torch lasted 6 hours on not-new batteries - I don't reckon that's a bad statistic. And it had a helpful red warning light that flashed when the battery was low. Given it was almost light I didn't change my batteries. Once the batteries were low, the torch would switch itself off to preserve the battery that was left.  I could see enough to run most of the time and I was then able to switch it back on for the bits where I needed a bit of extra light.

And what about getting lost? There were a few parts where I went marginally off course or went round the perimeter of a field when I could have taken a direct route across the middle to the next stile / gate. In fact the only point where I got lost to the point that it bothered me was after dawn!

In terms of running in the dark, I now feel much less scared about this aspect of longer races. In an ideal world I'd still want to recce the night time bit of the course in advance. But a section of night time running is definitely not something to put me off a race anymore.