Decided to reduce right down to 10 minute runs and see if the calf muscle issues could be resolved. Typically, once I started running I didn't want to stop so decided to go for 15 minutes and turned back dutifully at exactly 7:30 mins. At around 12 minutes I became aware of calf muscle pain and at 12:45 mins decided to stop. Yes! I should have stuck to 10 minutes!
It occurred to me while running that a life time of heel striking has probably developed a real weakness in the calf muscles. I know that in body building they say that the calves are the hardest muscles to develop - so perhaps there is a link here. Perhaps it will just take patience and a really progressive approach to get the calf muscles up to scratch. For me at the moment running is not my goal, so this is a real opportunity to try to make this work. Perhaps it will require limiting running to 10 minutes for quite some time and then stepping up just one minute at a time. I'll try to get it so that I run each day for around 10 minutes - or whatever level is low enough to prevent an over-reactive pain developing in the following days. The D.O.M.S. I've been getting from the slightly longer runs have been very debilitating and made me feel almost ill - they were that bad! However this was never an injury, just a very strong adaptive reaction by the muscles - which is in itself probably a very good sign. I'd just like to get there without the debilitating effects that prevent me from even getting a good cycling workout.
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