My lower leg hurts for about 10 days now. Thought it was just a simple case of shin splints in the beginning but not sure now.
Got an appointment with the doctor/x-ray tomorrow. Could either be a bad case of tendonitis or a stress fracture it seems.
Of course I googled stress fracture and the interwebs make it sound like armageddon. So thought I would ask ST, and find out about your experiences with stress fractures (if you did had the bad luck of getting one).
I had a tibial stress fracture a few years ago and didn’t run for 8 weeks. I was able to bike and water run so it wasn’t too terrible. Clipping out on the bike hurt so I went to toe clips for the duration, and got some funny looks, but so what. I could walk, but any pressure on the area hurt. Good luck.
You’d know if you have a stress fracture. You can hobble through shin splits. Not so with a stress fracture. If it is a fracture. Done for 6-10 weeks. If it is just a bad case of shin splits I’d say 2-4 weeks with mile running, rolling and ice.
MK-7 instead of plain old vit K and look into Strontium in addition to calcium.
An AlterG treadmill is one of the better ways to keep some run training without exacerbating the situation.
You can find one near you on their website: http://www.alter-g.com/
I’m in the same boat - I have had nagging pain since Christmas, and finally got my bone scan results yesterday. It looks like a stress fracture. I’ll let you know how things go from here.
Shin, seems like an odd place for a stress fracture, usually it’s feet/ankle or occasionally femur. I’ve had 3 (all were back during High School, 1 in a metatarsal, 2 in the same spot on my ankle). No running for 6-8 weeks, like others have said. I think you could still swim, and it would depend where the fracture is as to whether you could bike.
Go to a doctor, and get an xray, and/or bone scan. Self-diagnosing on the internet is a bad idea.
Deep water running in VERY effective for maintaining fitness while nursing a stress fracture. Boring, but effective. Get some waterproof music and let 'er rip.
Honestly, given the choice, I’d take a sfx over tendon/muscle injury. Bones tend to heal pretty quickly and cleanly. Soft stuff lingers and nags and is an all around PITA…
That aside, I’ve had sfx’s where I could still run (nagging pain, but runnable–tibial)…and ones where I couldn’t even put weight on the foot (metatarsal and one of the tibials). In all cases, it’s 6-10 weeks to recovery.
Pool running is the best for run fitness (for the foot sfx, I came out of it in better shape then I went in–ended up with a 10 mile PR out of the deal). Supplement with bike and swim. Really, aside from moving my run inside into the water, my training didn’t change very much.
Honestly, given the choice, I’d take a sfx over tendon/muscle injury. Bones tend to heal pretty quickly and cleanly. Soft stuff lingers and nags and is an all around PITA…
I tell runners this all the time when I give them a stress fx diagnosis and they think I’m crazy, but it is often the case!
Gave my self a femoral Sfx midway between the ends.
how did you figure out eventually what it was?
** It was pretty self evident based on the presentation. I knew what it was, trained for 4 week and did my A race, then I went to the MD for diagnosis (Bone scan and MRI)**
how painful was it? could you still walk? It was more a dull ache, almost like a muscle pull. Sharp pain when started running but went away after a minute or so which returned when I stopped. MD was surprised by little pain there was (or I was admitting to). I could easily run through it
how long did it take to recover? No running for 6 weeks. Build my base up from 800m 3x a week when I resumed. Once healed I had about zero issues with it
what workouts could you do in the meantime?
** I could do anything that did not cause acute pain. I ended up bike a lot (~200m/week) during those 6 weeks. I held my base pretty good when I started running again**
I had a stress fracture in my femur last September. like you, I had a feeling I knew what it was for a couple of weeks, but I had a target race that I wanted to end the season with. It didn’t hurt very much, but it felt like a very deep muscle ache that I couldn’t massage or stretch. The area of discomfort was not very specific or isolated, and more general (within about 4" on the front/inside of my femoral shaft). Didn’t give me much discomfort when I walked, but it would be very sensitive while running and the pain would start pretty much immediately on my runs. No pain while biking or swimming. I took about 10 days off of running prior to the race and felt pretty good. The day after the race (9/11/11) I got it checked out and confirmed that it was in fact a stress fracture.
I was (supposed to be) on crutches for 3-4 weeks. Honestly, I didn’t use the crutches much because it gave me no pain while walking, but I did try to consciously stay off of that leg as much as I could. I was also prohibited from cycling. I took this very seriously, and focused on swimming until the end of October, when I started to do some easy biking too. Didn’t run until 11/24/11. Probably not what you want to hear, but after starting up again, I had continuous issues with that leg (primarily in the knee), and have subsequently decided to dedicate the season to cycling.
To answer your questions:
I had a sense of what it was due to the location of the “ache” and the fact that I couldn’t “access” the sensitive area with massage or stretching
It was not particularly painful unless I was running. It wasn’t even unbearable to run, but I could tell that I was doing damage to myself. Basically more of a strong dull ache, and no accute pain.
I couldn’t bike for about a month and a half, and I couldn’t run for 75+ days.
In the meantime I swam a lot (although careful with pushoffs and kick sets), and worked on some hip, core, and upper body strength and flexibility. I tried aqua jogging and did it a handfull of times, but I just couldn’t handle the boredom. More power to you if you can.
Good luck!
Edit: I also took Isotonic Calcium as recommended by my Doctor. It was a powder form called nutrametrix isotonix calcium complete. Took at least 750 mg per day. This type of isotonic calcium is supposed to be absorbed by the body more efficiently than other varieties (I don’t claim to know anything about this, but this is what I was told by my Doctor).
My lower leg hurts for about 10 days now. Thought it was just a simple case of shin splints in the beginning but not sure now.
Got an appointment with the doctor/x-ray tomorrow. Could either be a bad case of tendonitis or a stress fracture it seems.
Of course I googled stress fracture and the interwebs make it sound like armageddon. So thought I would ask ST, and find out about your experiences with stress fractures (if you did had the bad luck of getting one).
how did you figure out eventually what it was?
how painful was it? could you still walk?
how long did it take to recover?
what workouts could you do in the meantime?
humbly awaiting guidance…
When I had my stress reaction (Jr. stress fracture) in my tibia I described it to the Dr. as “feels like a hatchet chop in my leg.” It didn’t show up on x-ray but MRI showed the stress reaction. I think it was called cortical thickening. It was very sensitive to the touch, but in a very isolated area. I could walk but running hurt, as did hustling down a flight of stairs, or other activities where the impact was greater than walking.
I took 4 weeks totally off, then started back to running very slowly. As in, the first 2 weeks I was allowed 3 minutes of running three times a week. Yes, less than 2 miles a week. Third week I was at 5 minutes of running 3 times a week. The build-up was gradual and seemed to take eons but I’ve never had another issue. I am sure if I’d rushed back into things there would have been a recurrence. Being patient in the recovery and return to running is the absolute best bit of advice I could give anybody.
While I was healing I pool ran, rode my bike (no standing on the pedals allowed), swam, and walked a lot. I was strictly a runner at the time so the rediscovery of swimming and biking led me to enter the world of triathlon.
My advice: rest till it’s TOTALLY healed. Yep, that means no running/jumping or any high impact sports whatsoever.
I had a tibial stress fracture from September 2011 after a half-marathon, but I didn’t listen to my body, and pushed it. I kept running and running and doing all sorts of crazy shit till the pain got so bad I couldn’t even run for the bus. Even walking become painful.
So I went to the docs, got a MRI and an x-ray done in about early November and got a proper MC excusing me from lower limb activities for 3 months. Yes, 3 months. I’m in the military so I needed an official MC to get me excused from trainings.
So anyway, painful lesson learned. I could have healed in a month or so if I just rested.
What helps:
AIRCAST/WALKER.
This shit helps. Takes almost all the weight off your injured leg and you look cool like the terminator or something.
Swimming/biking.
I’m not so sure about biking, but where my stress fracture was, the doc said I could still cycle but it may be different for you so check with your doc first. Keeps the body moving and healthy since you can’t run.
RICE.
Do it everyday.
Get a physio to evaluate your running gait. If a SF is on one leg, it may be because of asymmetrical running gait. For instance, the SF I got on my right leg was cause of a tendency to stick my right foot outwards more than my left foot when running, something I didn’t notice till the doc pointed it out. So to prevent a recurrence, find the problem and correct it.
FYI the doc even told me to move from my upper bunk bed to lower bunk so I dont have to risk landing heavily on my legs when I get down the bed in the morning. Yes, it gets pretty bad. So take care.
I had a tibial stress fracture recently. It started out as shin splints but progressed to a stress fracture over time. It was very painful but I was able to run and race (and race very well actually) on it while it was fractured. It was very painful to walk on - felt like a broken leg - and I would have to ice it heavily after every run. Would also wake up in the middle of the night with a terrible ache in there.
I only figured out that it was actually fractured when I also fractured a bone in my foot and couldn’t walk. The fracture in the tibia showed up when they bone scanned the foot.
As far as timeline… I was off running for 12 weeks. Came back but tried to return too quickly and too intensely and it returned. Took another 2 months off and slowly (very slowly this time) came back to running and haven’t had any problems yet. By slowly returning I mean starting out at 30 minutes, 4 times a week of 1 minute slow run, 4 minute walk. The following week I upped the run to 2minutes and the lowered the walk to 3. Keep doing that until you are running continuously and then increase the time by 10% per week after that.
If it is fractured just make sure you don’t try to come back too soon and too hard. It’s worth the patience not to have a relapse