Calf strain?

[Crankin]

When I was on my tour, I had a back and leg massage the day we did the 17k (10 mile) climb. The therapist told me my right calf felt "different from my left," and that the muscles were stressed. She told me to stretch and baby it, as she was worried I could pull it, etc.
I hadn't noticed it at all before she told me this, but of course, as soon as someone puts an idea in my head, I obsess on it! I've been stretching it with calf raises. I did feel it a bit on the last day of the tour. Since then, I have only ridden twice and run twice, along with some yoga. Yesterday, I woke up and I could *feel* the pain. It's not excruciating, more like a dull ache on the right side of my gastroc. I don't remember feeling it hurt on my 5K Saturday; I wore sandals with small heels (1.5 inch) Saturday night and it was like after the run and wearing those shoes, it got worse.
I rested yesterday, finally getting my sleep back on US time. I can feel it even a little more this morning. I am supposed to ride later today (nothing more than my 18-20 mile loop), run tomorrow, as well as doing an easy ride with a friend. Wednesday I have a 50 mile hilly group ride.
What other stretches can I do to help this? Should I be icing it? Get a massage? Help!

[OakLeaf]

Are you working out trigger points? That should be done before stretching.

The ones I get in my calves are so hard and deep that my PT actually advised going over them with the foam roller first to soften them up, then attacking them with Stick or Thera-Cane.

On me they can be so hard and deep that the only ways I can get enough pressure without totally wearing out my arms and back are (1) sit on the floor, hold one end of the Stick and wedge the other end on a piece of furniture a foot or so off the floor, then drape my calf over that; or (2) again sitting on the floor, balance a Thera-Cane on the long protrusions, hold the curved end and use that to drag the small protrusions across my calf (ouch!!!). You might want to be a bit more gentle than that if it's giving you trouble.

Last time I had something that I was identifying as a strain, it was in my vastus intermedialis (no idea how I did that ), and I hesitated to do SMR on it, but as soon as I got it on the foam roller, it cleared up.

Hope you feel better soon.

[Crankin]

I don't have a stick or cane, but I did use the foam roller yesterday. Not sure how to exactly position it and myself to do that correctly. I ended up actually doing some upside down push ups (?) to get the right pressure to roll my calf out!
Will be going to work on this shortly. Thanks.

[OakLeaf]

Rolling pin will work, if you have one of those and don't mind putting it on your skin.

Opposite knee in a sitting position works too, but I can't get it close enough to the knee of the leg I'm working on, to get the highest points.

[KnottedYet]

Calf muscles don't spontaneously turn into hard knots for no reason.

Treating the knots is nice, but you might want to go after what caused the knots in the first place. It might be worth it to wander in to a PT's office and ask them to figure out what is off with the mobility of the foot on that leg, that it is causing your calf to go nuts. (usually its a dorsiflexion loss)

Some folks have bigger calves on their long legs, because they vault on that leg when they walk. But that's a life-long compensation, and not usually symptomatic.

(of course, you had no problem until the LMP mentioned you were assymmetrical -which everyone is- and got you stretching and eccentric loading the heck out of it... which would make anyone sore)

[OakLeaf]

Knott, can I jump in? The PT I saw was of the opinion that it was the knots that were causing my loss of dorsiflexion. Does this kind of thing tend to be a vicious cycle?

IAE they're getting lots better and I'm doing a lot of things, including strengthening my feet and hips, losing the custom orthotics in my running shoes, putting in support for the metatarsal arches, trying to stay away from aerobics as much as I can (really I'm thinking I won't teach any more after this year), and lowering the seat height on my bike.



Now that I think about it... Crankin, maybe it was the rental bike that did it? It was a matter of 3 mm that made all the difference in the world to my calves, and it was a long process of learning not to plantar flex while pedaling so that I could lower my seat without hurting my knees. It's a small enough difference that maybe you might not even have noticed being too high on the rental bike?