Intense Ankle Pain (Week 2)

[zoldrummer]

Hey all. I'm about halfway through week two and I'm experiencing some severe ankle pain during and long after my runs. Instead of feeling it in the joint itself, I feel shooting pain throughout all the muscles surrounding my ankle. The pain lasts for a couple days, and gets better right before my next run. As a bit of side info, I suffer from overpronation (read: flat feet) and the streets I'm running on aren't in particularly good shape. I am also on my feet 5-6 hours at a time for work, so I do walk a lot. I figured the pain came from a bunch of muscles I don't use very often all of the sudden getting a lot of high-impact use. Is this a problem with my form, or something that will work itself out over the weeks? Or a combination of the two?

Thanks for all the help and support

[Mandy123]

This could be from nOt stretching before and after a run also a pair of good arched shoes will help a lot to help stretch out the ankle and back calf put your toe leaning against the wall and lean into it it really stretches the ankle!

[FBrun]

I had some knee pains at a similar point (just finished week 8) - generally the pains were much worse in first few weeks and have now mostly gone.

A few ideas:

• Be sure to stretch a LOT before, during and after your run. Often it is tight muscles causing the pain in joints such as ankles and knees, and also in tendons (achilles etc), and stretching helps tendons too.
• Your legs have things called "trigger points" (spots of tight muscle that refer pain to somewhere else) - e.g. I had some trigger points in middle of the main thigh muscle that referred pain to knee, causing quite a lot of knee pain. Learn how to do trigger point massage (Bonnie Prudden has a great book on this, strongly recommended: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pain-Erasure-Bo ... 0871319837 ) - I did this mostly before the run if I had some knee pain, but also during the run I would stop for a minute and stretch the relevant muscle, do some trigger points (only 5 sec per point) then stretch again.
• You almost certainly have trigger points that are tight (everyone does) and it's quite likely these points are causing the pain. The points could be anywhere in muscles in the feet, calves, shins, thighs. Get the Bonnie Prudden book and apply it.
• Check the NHS website on injuries, and see your doctor if you get persistent pains.
• Don't run if the pain continues through the whole run (my rule of thumb) - if it disappears after a few minutes, you could probably avoid it with more pre-run stretches and trigger point work.
• stretch a lot after the run - by which I mean 10 minutes or so if you are getting pain.
• if you haven't had a gait analysis in a proper running shop (they video you on a treadmill to see how your foot pronates etc) and bought running shoes that fit your gait - do it!

I'm not a doctor or a physio so do consult one or both. However I did have RSI (repetitive strain injury) really badly 20 years back, and learnt a lot about how to get rid of such pains.

Now I must go and stretch again - forgot to do it right after run, which is a bad habit of mine...

[Ian]

Re stretching before your run:-

Stretching cold muscles is more likely to cause injury than prevent it. I have not stretched before any run on this program, just afterwards when it tells you to. I do spend at least 20 seconds per stretch though and do 2 cycles of some of them. I'm a lot more supple than I was at the start as a result.

If you want to stretch beforehand make sure you do a warmup first and do gentle stretches only.

[FBrun]

If your leg/knee/ankle is really hurting before a run, and you stretch beforehand, ideally combined with trigger point work, it may be better than running with tight muscles. Generally I prefer to walk for 5 minutes then do stretches, but sometimes you can get a better stretch at home before you start (somewhere to lean on etc).

[Mandy123]

Power through the pain!

[FBrun]

Power through the pain!

Not good advice, even if it was a joke... if someone has a real ankle/knee injury, they need to moderate their running until it's healed. If it's muscular, stretching and trigger point work would help, but just keeping on running without changing anything won't change the situation.

[Mandy123]

It all depends on how you interpret the saying