Greetings my fellow runners.
I am turning to you for help as I have exhausted practically everything I can (from doctors to chyropractors) and I don't know what to do anymore so I am kinda hoping someone here may have gone through the same thing and could help me.
So, I've been running 5-7k 3-4 times a week recreationally for about 5 years now (all trail, no concrete roads) without any trouble (oh, I am 28 years old, played basketball since I was 6 and never had any injury). So this January I started noticing a pain that has been building up gradually over a course of 2-3 weeks to a point where I stopped running altogether because it was too much (the right leg was completely completely good). The last 2 months I have not done any sports and for a month I have been using NSAID (etoricoxib for 3 weeks and ibuprofen for 1 week).
The characteristics of the pain:
Location: in my posterior lower thigh, popliteal fossa and laterally at the knee. I can't localise the pain to a precise point of maximal pain, neither there is any pain on palpation. The pain is kind of like a mild cramp and it is migrating among the locations I've written above. The most accurate term I can give is that I feel like my leg is rotting. The right leg is completely completely fine.
I must stress that I have no physical clinical signs - there is no tenderness on palpation whatsoever, no redness, no swelling, no varicose veins.
It is present solely during running and perhaps few hours after running (but gradually less of course, it's kind of like weaning down). In ''normal'' situations I have no pain or at least very seldomly I can feel something briefly but I feel this may be my mind playing with me since I am constantly ''listening'' the leg in my head for any pain..
Before the 2 month rest, I also did some walkings of a few kms and at about the 4km mark the leg started to hurt.
During the 2nd month of the 2 months rest, I did walkings of about the same distance and didn't really feel any pain so I guess this can be counted as a minor improvement.
Yesterday I went for a run to see how is the leg. If I quantify the feeling I would say that the pain is milder for only about 20-30% and that I can last about 2 km (before the 2 month rest the pain came up really quickly, shortly after the run was commenced so I guess this counts as a mild improvement) before having to stop, stretch, walk a bit and then continue. After stretching and walking the pain is temporarily better but then it quite quickly builds up again.
I visited two chyropractors. One told me that from I'm told him, he's 99% sure that the ischiadic nerve is compressed somewhere in its path – possibly by the piriformis. Did some manual manuevering but I doubt this helped much…perhaps I should've gone to him more times but even then the corona situation quite quickly prohibited me from doing that…
The other one didn't really listen to me as much and just did some acupuncture on my hamstring as according to him, this was surely a hamstring strain…needless to say things didn't get any better.
Since the pain is presenting during running only, my GP thought about neurogenic claudication so I did an MR of the lumbar spine to exclude potential foraminal/spinal stenosis - only a minor L4-L5 central hernia was found which wouldn't explain my problems. I also have to stress that I have no pain whatsoever, not during rest and not during activity in my lower back, buttocks, anteromedial left thigh, from the left knee downwards and the whole right leg. I have not felt any tingles going down my left leg or in my toes whatsoever.
On MR of the knee a high signal at the insertion of the popliteal tendon was described - ala possible popliteal tendinopathy but the second opinion that I retrieved was it can easily also be a magic angle artefact which is common with this tendon cause it curves at the angle of 45 degrees to its femoral insertion. Also my symptoms and the fact the pain is still here after 2 months of rest and 1 months of NSAID talk against inflammatory etiology.
So if you read this you can now see why I am desperate. The pain isn't going away and running through forests and meadows means EVERYTHING to me. I am miserable and desperate.
So I was thinking some more and remembered that I have switched running shoes at the beginning of the January and I was using them for about a month before the pain finally became too severe to handle so I was kinda hoping this could be the reason for my troubles?? I went from Salomon X-scream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GusQBNoWzk4) to La Sportiva Tempesta GTX. Of course, yday I used the previous Salomon ones when I went for my first run after 2 months and as I wrote there was a mild improvement but still far far from sufficient. I do not intend to stop running now. I have rested for 2 months and I will not rest anymore especially with all the beautiful days outside. I will run through the pain and hope it goes away. The pain I think is even more pronounced because all I think about during the run is if the leg is hurting so I hope eventually this will also go away. I can't envisage my life without trail running.
How long till the pain should go away after ditching the ''guilty'' shoes in your experience?
The only thing I am doing right now is stretching.
I am doing the 3 exercises mentioned in this article - https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20858939/back-in-balance/, this exercise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh3gioc_x4I and then when I lie on the back and straighten my leg up high with an elastic band (basically the Lasegue sciatica test - speaking of that, I notice that the lateral part of my left knee starts burning at a certain angle (quite high one, like 70 degrees) but I don’t feel that in the right leg (there isn’t any other symptoms on left so as far as I know this isn’t a sign of a positive Lasegue test since that would mean I should feel tingling going to my toes at a much lower angle, I think it just means that my right leg is more flexible?...just thought I’d mention it if it lightens up someone’s brain :))
Also, I thought about if this could be a consequence of imbalance of my legs but I can't grasp the concept. Is my right leg *too weak* so the left works more and thus hurts or is the left leg the weaker one and thus hurts? Which one should I stretch more, the left or right one?
If anyone went through anything similar, I would BEG for your advice.
Thank you, regards Mike
I am turning to you for help as I have exhausted practically everything I can (from doctors to chyropractors) and I don't know what to do anymore so I am kinda hoping someone here may have gone through the same thing and could help me.
So, I've been running 5-7k 3-4 times a week recreationally for about 5 years now (all trail, no concrete roads) without any trouble (oh, I am 28 years old, played basketball since I was 6 and never had any injury). So this January I started noticing a pain that has been building up gradually over a course of 2-3 weeks to a point where I stopped running altogether because it was too much (the right leg was completely completely good). The last 2 months I have not done any sports and for a month I have been using NSAID (etoricoxib for 3 weeks and ibuprofen for 1 week).
The characteristics of the pain:
Location: in my posterior lower thigh, popliteal fossa and laterally at the knee. I can't localise the pain to a precise point of maximal pain, neither there is any pain on palpation. The pain is kind of like a mild cramp and it is migrating among the locations I've written above. The most accurate term I can give is that I feel like my leg is rotting. The right leg is completely completely fine.
I must stress that I have no physical clinical signs - there is no tenderness on palpation whatsoever, no redness, no swelling, no varicose veins.
It is present solely during running and perhaps few hours after running (but gradually less of course, it's kind of like weaning down). In ''normal'' situations I have no pain or at least very seldomly I can feel something briefly but I feel this may be my mind playing with me since I am constantly ''listening'' the leg in my head for any pain..
Before the 2 month rest, I also did some walkings of a few kms and at about the 4km mark the leg started to hurt.
During the 2nd month of the 2 months rest, I did walkings of about the same distance and didn't really feel any pain so I guess this can be counted as a minor improvement.
Yesterday I went for a run to see how is the leg. If I quantify the feeling I would say that the pain is milder for only about 20-30% and that I can last about 2 km (before the 2 month rest the pain came up really quickly, shortly after the run was commenced so I guess this counts as a mild improvement) before having to stop, stretch, walk a bit and then continue. After stretching and walking the pain is temporarily better but then it quite quickly builds up again.
I visited two chyropractors. One told me that from I'm told him, he's 99% sure that the ischiadic nerve is compressed somewhere in its path – possibly by the piriformis. Did some manual manuevering but I doubt this helped much…perhaps I should've gone to him more times but even then the corona situation quite quickly prohibited me from doing that…
The other one didn't really listen to me as much and just did some acupuncture on my hamstring as according to him, this was surely a hamstring strain…needless to say things didn't get any better.
Since the pain is presenting during running only, my GP thought about neurogenic claudication so I did an MR of the lumbar spine to exclude potential foraminal/spinal stenosis - only a minor L4-L5 central hernia was found which wouldn't explain my problems. I also have to stress that I have no pain whatsoever, not during rest and not during activity in my lower back, buttocks, anteromedial left thigh, from the left knee downwards and the whole right leg. I have not felt any tingles going down my left leg or in my toes whatsoever.
On MR of the knee a high signal at the insertion of the popliteal tendon was described - ala possible popliteal tendinopathy but the second opinion that I retrieved was it can easily also be a magic angle artefact which is common with this tendon cause it curves at the angle of 45 degrees to its femoral insertion. Also my symptoms and the fact the pain is still here after 2 months of rest and 1 months of NSAID talk against inflammatory etiology.
So if you read this you can now see why I am desperate. The pain isn't going away and running through forests and meadows means EVERYTHING to me. I am miserable and desperate.
So I was thinking some more and remembered that I have switched running shoes at the beginning of the January and I was using them for about a month before the pain finally became too severe to handle so I was kinda hoping this could be the reason for my troubles?? I went from Salomon X-scream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GusQBNoWzk4) to La Sportiva Tempesta GTX. Of course, yday I used the previous Salomon ones when I went for my first run after 2 months and as I wrote there was a mild improvement but still far far from sufficient. I do not intend to stop running now. I have rested for 2 months and I will not rest anymore especially with all the beautiful days outside. I will run through the pain and hope it goes away. The pain I think is even more pronounced because all I think about during the run is if the leg is hurting so I hope eventually this will also go away. I can't envisage my life without trail running.
How long till the pain should go away after ditching the ''guilty'' shoes in your experience?
The only thing I am doing right now is stretching.
I am doing the 3 exercises mentioned in this article - https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20858939/back-in-balance/, this exercise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh3gioc_x4I and then when I lie on the back and straighten my leg up high with an elastic band (basically the Lasegue sciatica test - speaking of that, I notice that the lateral part of my left knee starts burning at a certain angle (quite high one, like 70 degrees) but I don’t feel that in the right leg (there isn’t any other symptoms on left so as far as I know this isn’t a sign of a positive Lasegue test since that would mean I should feel tingling going to my toes at a much lower angle, I think it just means that my right leg is more flexible?...just thought I’d mention it if it lightens up someone’s brain :))
Also, I thought about if this could be a consequence of imbalance of my legs but I can't grasp the concept. Is my right leg *too weak* so the left works more and thus hurts or is the left leg the weaker one and thus hurts? Which one should I stretch more, the left or right one?
If anyone went through anything similar, I would BEG for your advice.
Thank you, regards Mike