Biking and running – odd bedfellows
Over the past few weeks I’ve been riding much more, and running a little less.
For a few weeks, I’d bike home (8 miles) and immediately change into running gear and hit the road for a 7 mile run.
Well, it didn’t take that long for the additional workload to begin taking its toll.
The first thing I noticed was chronic fatigue in my quads. By the end of the week, they would be a little sore, but mainly just felt completely drained.
That’s not healthy, as too much of that leads to injury. I started to get worried.
The next area was my calves.
I don’t really rely heavily on my calves when running. My stride tends to be very short, alleviating much of the toe-off that generally occurs with longer striding folk.
But when biking, I use a great deal of calf muscle when pedaling. I have a tendency to rotate my foot in a pawing motion as I pedal through the bottom part of the stroke. This is similar to running toe-off, but since I run with short strides, my calf muscles were not prepared for that kind of work out.
Both Achilles tendons became sore where they connect to the calf muscle tissue, and the muscle on the inner side of my left leg got really pissed off, and required several days of massaging and gentle stretching to get happy again.
In the mean time, I’ve started to alternate days. No more blocks of biking-to-running except for weekend training.
So far it seems to be helping.
Bill