The Peroneus What-us?

As you may have read here before, I'm training for a 5k. All has been progressing well and I am actually starting to make some gains!

But, last week, I started to have some soreness in my lower legs which has progressed into a searing pain and tightness this week. It pops up about 10 minutes in, and sticks around until I stretch it. Which means I'm stopping to stretch every five minutes or so. The pain is not my calf, not shin splints, but on the outside of the leg, between the ankle and knee. There is no discernible swelling or heat, so I'm thinking it's just a strain and not a tendon problem. And while the immediate pain stops shortly after running, it feels fatigued pretty much constantly, in the same way your arms muscles feel after doing a lot of reps.

After some speculation from Anthony that there IS no muscle there to pull, I turned to my next-trusted research source, Google, and I learned that the muscle is called the peroneus longus. It controls eversion (lifting the pinky-toe side of the foot) and plantar flexion (like pushing your gas pedal). And, ouch ouch ouch, pushing the gas pedal on the way home after a run hurts!

Really...leave it to me to strain a muscle no one's ever heard of! My calves, hamstrings, quads, etc. all feel great, but this odd side-stabilizing muscle is killing my training!

I am trying to work through it at a slow pace, but am definitely going to have to put the 5k training program on repeat for a couple of weeks. I'm also icing after runs, which seems to give some relief.

There are some specialized stretches for the longus that I am trying to do a few times a day and extensively before running.  Yoga stretching and rolling onto the outsides of my feet are practically the only way I can feel a good stretch in the muscle, but it does seem to help a bit.

Surprisingly enough, there are a lot of discussion hits for this type of strain. It seems like it will lessen within a couple of weeks with rest and care. While this is a frustrating set-back, hopefully it will clear up soon so I can get back to pushing myself! I still don't enjoy running, but I am enjoying seeing gains and reaching new milestones.