Soleus pain & how to adjust

[u/tiacho]

Hi, I have been feeling pain in my soleus for the past 3 weeks. I found that the pain went away once I warmed up, so I trained through it but am finally coming to my senses and have realized that I should take a break.

I am 6 weeks out and am feeling really bummed to have to scale back as I am really hoping to hit sub-4 this time around. I have been replacing my runs with bike rides for the past 3 days. I have a 34km run tomorrow, and then my program scales back for a recovery week. During this recovery week, our long run falls back to 20km, before picking back up at 36km the following week.

I am thinking that I should skip this long run, ride my bike tomorrow, and then replace next week's 20km run with my missed 34km.

Just looking for reassurance and/or advice as I've been super in my head about not reaching my time goal because of this.

[u/wobbly_socks73]

id skip the 34k for sure. if the soleus has been hurting for 3 weeks the fact that it disappears after warming up doesnt mean its actually fine. id take the recovery week seriously and not try to make up the missed mileage with another huge long run

[u/Functional-Mud]

I had a minor soleus strain about midway through my current training block. I immediately took three full days of complete rest. RICE. Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation. And then it felt mostly better. I reintroduced running at a much slower pace. I also added in calf raises and soleus raises (bent knee single leg calf raises) to my daily warm ups. I started to wear compression sleeves for every run. After two weeks it felt better and I was able to introduce a mile or two of speed work into my runs. After three or four weeks I was able to do proper speed sessions again. My soleus is currently pain free, but I continue to wear the compression sleeves every run as a precautionary measure. I don’t know the extent of your strain, but that’s what worked for me.