Self analysis

Monday, January 21st

New Shoes - 1223s

7:30 AM - 12 Miles, 80 min
Minuteman Trail - Arlington/Lexington

It was a very cold morning but I dressed accordingly and was ready to hammer out a solid long run. My legs felt great and therefore I was entertaining a brisk pace through most of the run.

However, the pain that I've been getting in my right leg was getting worse (most likely aggravated by the race yesterday) and put a damper on what could have been a great run. In the last 5-6 days, I've been having tightness and pain on the medial side of my leg just above the knee and closer to the hamstring. I figure it's an aggravation of the medial hamstring tendons, probably due to tight hamstrings and possibly over extending during speed work.

I'm not sure exactly what tendon is causing the problem but by looking at my muscle and tendon diagram, I can probably narrow it down to the semi-tendinosus or the semi-memranosus (or both). These connect the hamstring muscle to the tibia bone and play a key role in the extension of the leg and medial rotation of the knee. After my fall a few weeks ago, I was favoring my right leg quite a bit and therefore when I started running again, I put extra strain on that side which in turn caused a lot of tightness in those muscles. This is most likely the cause of irritation to these tendons. So like most cases of tendinitis, I'm running through the pain, icing when I can and massaging often. I'll see how it feels after tomorrows workout and see if I need to doing anything further.