Strange upper leg injury?

Triathlon Forum
1

I can’t figure out exactly what I did to myself or whether this is a significant injury or just one of those training things. I did some run speedwork on Thursday night (cruise intervals at just above LT pace) then went out for a long run on Saturday afternoon. I had a little bit of pain on the outside of my thigh, about 1/3 of the way up from my knee to my hip, when I started, but it felt like one of those running soreness things and I thought I could just run through it. It was okay through about 8.5 miles (I noticed it, but it wasn’t bad), but after that it went downhill very quickly. I finally stopped after about .5 mile of this and called the wife for a pick-up. By that time, just walking was painful. BTW, that was shortly after I went from running on the road to a trail.

The thing is, I’m not sure what I hurt. It feels like the pain is coming from my IT band, but it’s not at the knee, definitely a good 6 inches abobe the knee and everything I read about ITBS says the pain shows at the knee. I do have a tight IT Band, but this is usually apparent at the hip. Could be a quad muscle, but if so, it’s the one all the way on the outside of the leg. Definitely not far enough in the back of the leg to be a hamstring. It feels like muscle soreness, sometimes apparent when I walk, but not necessarily. I went out for a long ride yesterday and it wasn’t an issue on the bike. One other thing, the intervals were on the track so I was doing lots of left turns and this is on my left leg (the inside part of any turn).

Any thoughts, advice? Is it just something I need to rest by taking a week off from running?

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I have had pain in exactly the same place for almost a year now, on and off. Off in that sense I had half a year off running, then I had microdiscectomy because the doctors believed my troubles were due to a disc herniation found in MRI. But now that I´ve resumed running I still get pain in the same place, about one third of the way up to the knee. Sometimes I have slight pain in the hip as well. When I first got injured during a 10K run, I had a feeling of building up lactic acid in my lateral thigh, then after a while it cramped up. I could resume running after a while and ran slower to the finish. It´s the same now, a lot of lactic acid build up in my left thigh and then it starts hurting when the foot hits the ground.

3

You are definitely “describing” a tensor fascia latae/ITB issue. Sounds like you need to get aquainted with a foam roller :wink: