THIS IS NOT A MEDICAL THREAD. I will see a doctor if the symptoms persist, I'm just interested in other people's experiences who do had training for months at a time and then take a 1-2 week break.
Anyone else suffer from bad nocturnal leg cramps when not training?
By nocturnal leg cramp I mean waking up in the middle of the night with immense pain in the lower leg caused by a severe contraction of the calf muscle, not a cramp during or after exercise. Before I picked up running a year ago I would maybe get 1 bad leg cramp a year over the last 4-5 years but since I have been running a lot I have noticed I get very bad leg cramps when I stop training e.g. during taper.
I first noticed this back in August, I got some flu like sickness and had a fever for 4 days so didn't run, a week later I had my first half marathon so basically took the week off. Almost every night I would get a bad leg cramp during this taper week. As soon as I got back to training there was no problem at all for a couple of months until I started tapering for the full marathon 2 weeks back. In the last week of taper I started getting leg cramps almost every night. After the Marathon I was OK for a week but now every night the last 4 nights I have woken up screaming in pain, utterly confused. This morning I reached down and felt my calf was as hard as iron and completely knotted up.I'm almost scared to go to bed because I know what will happen
I'm fairly confident if I can get back running these cramps will disappear but I likely suffered a very minor stress fracture in my left foot so I'm backing off running. Trying to get swimming and biking but this is no where near the marathon training intensity.
Just wondering if other people have observed the same thing during taper, sickness, time-off, etc. I have a hunch it might be related to lack of nerve stimulus or the muscle recovery going overdrive without the training fatigue.
Anyone else suffer from bad nocturnal leg cramps when not training?
By nocturnal leg cramp I mean waking up in the middle of the night with immense pain in the lower leg caused by a severe contraction of the calf muscle, not a cramp during or after exercise. Before I picked up running a year ago I would maybe get 1 bad leg cramp a year over the last 4-5 years but since I have been running a lot I have noticed I get very bad leg cramps when I stop training e.g. during taper.
I first noticed this back in August, I got some flu like sickness and had a fever for 4 days so didn't run, a week later I had my first half marathon so basically took the week off. Almost every night I would get a bad leg cramp during this taper week. As soon as I got back to training there was no problem at all for a couple of months until I started tapering for the full marathon 2 weeks back. In the last week of taper I started getting leg cramps almost every night. After the Marathon I was OK for a week but now every night the last 4 nights I have woken up screaming in pain, utterly confused. This morning I reached down and felt my calf was as hard as iron and completely knotted up.I'm almost scared to go to bed because I know what will happen
I'm fairly confident if I can get back running these cramps will disappear but I likely suffered a very minor stress fracture in my left foot so I'm backing off running. Trying to get swimming and biking but this is no where near the marathon training intensity.
Just wondering if other people have observed the same thing during taper, sickness, time-off, etc. I have a hunch it might be related to lack of nerve stimulus or the muscle recovery going overdrive without the training fatigue.
