I experienced a pain during this weekend’s 5430 long course tri. It started the day before during my pre-race routine. I rode for 30 min,then ran for 10. I felt good on the bike, but as I began to run I had this crazy pain in my abs. The pain stretched from the lower right abs, diagonally up and across to my upper left side of my abs. I wasn’t running hard and finished my run and assumed maybe I hadn’t digested lunch enough. Then during Sunday’s race, I was putting together a decent race, nutrition plan going well (not trying anything new). Came into T2, started my run and immediately had the same pain. I couldn’t expand my stomach to take deep breaths and basically had to slow to a shuffle/walk. I had to stop a couple times and bend over to try and “shrink” my stomach. I pushed through and finished the race. I guess I learned a lot about myself from this experience, but I have no idea what that pain was. The pain went away when I stopped running and I have zero lingering affects. Anyone ever have something similar??? Thanks for the feedback.
Side ache? Did you get a side ache on a previous run and “push through it”? I actually strained my “side muscle” during a race and it hurt on every run from then on for awhile until it healed.
I’ve had a lot of stomach issues over the years but this doesn’t so much as sound like a gastrointestnal issue as it may a muscle thing.
Man, that is an odd assortment of very uncomfortable symptoms. I hate to tell you this since I know you already knew it and it’s pretty generic- but I’d head off to the doctor here pretty quickly if it doesn’t subside entirely.
Best of luck with that.
I had good luck on similar problem by doing a search on stitch or stomach pain, etc. The couple of times I had it, it hurt for a week afterward though.
The best description of the pain I found was that it is like your stomach turns into a speed governor.
The way I’ve kept it at bay is to do deep belly breathing when I come in on the bike and try to stretch my stomach as well as I can on the bike. I’ve read on searches about taking some hard outward breaths and also that it is caused by a deep ab muscle that becomes accustomed to being in the bike position and then has a hard time stretching out for the run. I try to focus on belly breathing at the beginning of the run.
I’m having quite a severe “cramp” on my right side… I really can’t tell if it’s muscular or otherwise, but it hurts like a bitch. My massage therapist worked on my abs, but it didn’t help at all so I’m pretty tempted to think it’s something else (I haven’t ruled muscular out though). I’m going to head to my doctor soon because it’s not getting better. I can actually feel it right now just sitting here… felt it on my walk to Starbucks this morning too.
I just had my appendix taken out 6 weeks ago after a similar bout. I’d occasionally had severe stomach pain/cramp/whatever on my right side, but it always went away after a day or so. Not this time. I woke up at 2AM and it felt like someone had stabbed me in the side and was twisting the knife. 6 hours later I had surgery and fortunately it hadn’t ruptured. If it’s not in your muscles then it’s in your guts and/or gallbladder. Get it checked out. If it’s appendicitis having it pop can be deadly.
I’ve been wondering about that, but the pain seems to high up to be my appendix. It’s on my right side, but just to the left of my ribs - below my chest a couple of ribs. I just got told I have exercise induced asthma and was hoping with my inhaler the pain would go away if it was related to my breathing, but even with normal breathing patterns it seems to pop up in a bad way. Definitely planning on the doctor, but with IMC in two weeks I’m tempted to wait til after.
Can you describe where you were feeling the pain? Was it right where the appendix is supposed to be, or did it radiate to other places?
My pain was specifically right on the appendix, but it was also “only hours from rupturing.” Earlier pain had been sorta indeterminate right side somewhat lower than the ribcage. That’s why I mentioned gallbladder as well, which is exactly where you are describing the pain. Apparently it’s common to confuse the two, which is why they like to do a contrast Catscan before operating to remove the wrong one!!! Either way I’d talk to a doc about it. From the doc’s description my case is fairly unusual…the vast majority only have a generic stomach/intestinal pain and it’s not nearly so localized.
Pain in the abdominal viscera will often migrate. It’s not at all uncommon for appendicitis to start off feeling like gas pains in the upper left quadrant, then wander diagonally down to the RLQ and become much sharper. The human nervous system has never had any real evolutionary reason to give clear signals as to where the source of the pain comes from. Traditionally, you either recovered or you didn’t.
This may just be my bias as a CT tech, but I’d be very inclined to have ANY ongoing source of abdominal pain checked out. Fifty to one it ends up being yet another one of those cases with nothing obviously amiss, but it’s that other one in fifty . . . Not to make you paranoid, but you are familiar with JulieAnne White’s near death experience, aren’t you?
Don’t want to scare you unduly. Just bear in mind that having this sort of thing checked out by ultrasound or CT is relatively quick and painless. (Or almost painless, if you have to get IV contrast for a CT scan - but that should be no problem for somebody with a sig line like yours.)