For the past couple of years I have been experiencing pain and soreness while cycling. My right ankle on the lateral side feels like the tendons are being stretched! Sometimes I just have a numb foot and sometimes I get shooting pain up the lateral side of my right leg from my ankle bone up about 8 inches. Today it was so bad that when I got home i could not stand on the leg and the area was very sore to the touch. This subsides after 15 minutes or so. Help I cannot run when this happens! I have raced tris with a numb foot for 5 miles and I can handle that somewhat - not this.
I have started using shims and that has helped somewhat. Somedays no pain others I have pain witin the first 5 minutes. If anyone has any pointers I would love to hear them. Thanks,
corbin
OK-first the obligatory: Dont take medical advice from the internet! Go see your Dr, orthopedist or sports specialist!
Now, reading your injury-account, "lateral side, ‘stretched’ ‘numb’ ‘shooting pain’ and “this subsides within 15min or so” “Somedays no pain, others pain in 5min” I thought, have you gone to the Dr, and explained the problem? because you’ve done a very nice description of something that is localized, exercise-induced, and subsides very quickly with exercise. Most likely it is an issue with the blood-supply to the lateral compartment. Something is preventing increased blood flow during exercise, but normal blood flow is likely sufficient. What that is, you need a real live doctor to test and figure out.
There’s a couple of things that could be causing that: is it compartment syndrome, some sort of vessel occlusion etc? Since its been happening for a couple of years, and not getting exponentially worse and bothering you in just normal getting around (else you wouldve gone to the dr, right?) and youve got these wonderful CS-cue marks, “numb, stretched, pain subsides within 15min” Id say it may be possible you have (chronic/exercise induced) compartment syndrome of the lateral compartment. It’s quite common in endurance sports, and perfectly treatable. (If this is what you turns out you have, feel free to email me with questions, I had 4surgeries to fix CS, and they worked beautifully)
but, again, only a doctor can diagnose whether you have CS or something else, since you need to measure the intracompartmental pressure for a full diagnosis, and/or Dopplers to rule out vessel occlusions. Just go to a good sports guy, present the exact history you just did, they really should be able to figure it out.
What pedals and shoes? What is your English (running shoe, like “9.5” for example) size? What size are your shoes? What length are your crank arms and what kind? Let us know- we’ll brainstorm.