After my break down at Edale, I rang Lilleshall Sports Injury Rehab and made an appointment. Rob Sharp, who'd previously helped me with a shoulder problem, had an appointment that evening, so after work I changed and drove up to see him.
After a chat about the symptoms and some diagnostic work, Rob reckoned I'd put my fibula out of alignment. I think this was when I had the first problem on the BG Recce, nine days before Edale. The misalignment can apparently reduce the amount of blood reaching the calf muscle and also disrupt the nerves in the muscle. I think this is why I felt I had cramp and dead leg type symptoms in the calf. Rob showed me some stretches I could do to help the healing process and advised me on exercise while the damage was healing. I made another appointment for Thursday 31st.
I did very little on the Tuesday apart from the stretches, and hobbled around a bit at work. By Wednesday, the leg was feeling much better, almost right, so I went to the gym with James. I stuck to non-impact CV exercise, doing a half hour row of 7.5km, and then sessions on the upright and recumbent bikes, pushing my HR up to 156 on the upright doing some hard efforts. I'm impressed with how quickly I can recover back to a much lower HR nowadays - this is a useful adaptation for fell racing, particularly the longer events.
On Thursday my leg felt almost OK. In the evening I went up to Lilleshall again, and Rob did some pretty heavy duty physio stuff to the calf, looking to flush it, and work the muscle a bit.
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