I feel like I was standing on a train track and got hit by a train. Sometimes I get this weird sever muscle pain for no reason. I am MUCH more sore today than after ANY Ironman I have done. You guys should see me walk today… It’s embarrassing. I ran 4 miles yesterday and rode, like 12, outside with Powercranks. How the heck am I going to train today. Time for some Aleve. Any ideas on this? Why does this happen seemingly out of the blue?
Tom, those miles aren’t unusally long for you, so it’s not the workout, it’s something else. Did you eat anything unusual the day before? By unusual, I don’t mean squid hearts with sheep-eye stew. I mean something that you don’t usually eat. Like ice cream, or other “normal” food. There are a few doctors in town that say that allergies to specific foods can cause your symptoms. I could be as simple as wheat gluten, or milk protein, etc. If this happens to you very often, it might do you good to write down everything you eat every day. On the days you feel so bad, review the previous day’s list and see if anything keeps coming up on that list.
There are some labs around the country that test your blood for food allergies. I also know there are some allergists that think this is horse hockey, but the two local doctors here had an entire Healthwatch show on this very phenomenon…one of them found he was allergic to milk protein, and went from being told he needed a knee implant at 35 to biking and running with no pain at 62.
It’s worth a shot for a while just to write everything down that you eat and drink to see if something stands out.
Living in the Great White North you are probably immune to this, but I get really sore if I do much of anything in the cold. I assume I just don’t warm up properly. It wasn’t 70 or 80 below zero there yesterday was it? (That’s comparable to 30F in Mississippi terms.)
Your vehicle was totaled awhile back… did you take some hits you may not have been aware of? You would not be the first to go a few weeks and then have symptoms.
It’s localized. Geez, not to be a pus#$%, but I can’t belive how sore I am…
Darn, I menat to say generalized- I’m hurting everywhere.
I have never heard of compartment syndrome in the quad… the reason you get compartment syndrome in the tibial area is because you have the interosseus membrane on one side, the tibia and the fibula on the other side and the tough fascia on the 4th side… the quads are not contained in such a compartment so I don’t think calling it a compartment syndrome would be a misnomer… not that you can’t have a similair tissue damage in the quads though
Could be old age 
Sorry. Actually, when I start having generalized body aches, it means I’m coming down with a cold/flu. Anyone around you sick?
Exertional compartment syndrome can happen in most compartments, ie, muscle groups bound by inflexible structures, but cant happen in just one muscle. It usually/most often originates in the Anterior or Lateral compartments of the leg, since, as Taku said, those are strongly bound by the tibia and interossea membrane. However, in the lower leg, cyclists/runners are also susceptible to developing cs in the posterior and deep posterior compartments (ie calf).
There are described cases of cs in the thigh. The cases I have read about were almost all due to impact in contact sports (football etc) and were not, therefore, exertional(chronic) in etiology.
In rowers, canoeists, motorcrossers, you frequently get cs of the forearm. In theory, cs of the upperarm is possible, but I dont remember reading anything about it.
Francois is right about chronic(exertional) being ‘the one for athlete’, however, you *can, *if you dont take care of it, turn a chronic case into an acute situation. * *
I had exertional cs in the anterior and lateral compartments of the leg, and both compartments of the forearm, all bilaterally, had surgery to fix all of them, hence the info.
IMHO, I really dont think Tom has compartment syndrome.
Ziva