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Soleus Issues

July 21, 2015 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Didn't make it too far once again today. Right soleus causing me to limp again, had to stop after a block. Was super frustrated and anxious about my first race coming up, but calmed down after dinner and started researching. Think I made a good bit of progress.

1) Watched some slow-motion videos of professional runners. Read that the soleus is more engaged the more the knee is bent, and realized that though my footstrike and cadence are fairly similar to the pros, my knee is a fair bit more bent when my foot hits the ground -- maybe not a coincidence. Going to think about trying to adjust that aspect of my gait.

2) Studied some diagrams of the musculature in the calf. I had thought of the soleus as mostly below the gastrocnemius (main calf muscle), but as it turns out, it runs behind the gastrocnemius all the way to the knee. I then wondered if I was focusing in the wrong place with my myofascial release; I had been massaging the crap out of the area right around my achilles without much improvement. So I got out a tennis ball instead of my foam roller (for accuracy) and found that on the soleus that hurt, there was some very tight tissue beneath the calf. I didn't find the same tightness on the soleus that feels fine. Furthermore, after some stretching and massage work, I found that the tenderness around the achilles had decreased, even though I hadn't been directly working on it.

Hopefully this is progress! Really hoping I can race decently well Saturday. Will see how it feels tomorrow.