I had been training to run a marathon a couple weeks ago. All the training went well, and it looked as though I would easily set a PR. My taper went well (around 10 days). When I ran the marathon, my legs started tightening up around mile 14 (quads first, then hamstrings and calves). By mile 18, I was stopping almost every mile to stretch them to keep them from cramping. I ended up 23 minutes past my PR. Finishing was the most painful thing I have ever done, and I was totally depleted after (I coudnt even get myself up).
After the race, my calfs and quads started twitching uncontrollably. That was almost two weeks ago. Now whenever I do a run, my legs fatigue in less than two minutes and my pace drops by as much and 1:30 per minute. Any type of workout causes my legs to twitch for the rest of the day.
I did have a cold when I ran the marathon, but I think it is unrelated.
I have never experienced anything like this. Is this something I should worry about? When should it go away?
Some say the cramping could be attributed to electrolytes but more likely it is that you were going too hard or had not trained correctly for your body to adapt to the demands of the race (either overtrained and tired, or not trained enough). Running on tougher terrain than you are used to (hills for example) might also kills your muscles quickly. You’d be surprised how quickly your body will rebel when asked to do too much. The fact that your body was fighting infection might also be a contributing factor.
The twitching you have sounds like fasciculation. Common when your muscles have been thrashed and the cramping will not have helped this much. Don’t worry, it will go away. Two weeks is not a long time to recover from a marathon so just take it really easy, run really slow and easy and the twitching should gradually fade. Don’t look up fasciculation on Wikipedia, you’ll scare yourself! Your symptoms will be from tired muscles, not disease.
That said, I am not a doctor. If you are worried, or they don’t fade then it may be worth a visit to the clinic. I get them all the time and plenty of others do.