2 months in to tibia stress fracture - how am i supposed to feel?

a stress fracture site can hurt a little bit for a long, long time after fully healing. Not really any way to be sure.

Supplement high amounts of quality magnesium, vitamin k2, boron, and get d3 from the sun. All while keeping good calcium levels. The fracture will be gone in no time!

i suppose the doctor will tell me, but i'm guessing the MRI will show clean or close to it, since it's 3 weeks away.

if i still feel weird, i just ignore it unless it starts to HURT hurt again?

Not sure if I had a stress fracture in the past but my shin has a hard lump which gets tender quite frequently. Never really along the shin, just in that spot. My entire shin is fairly bumpy overall. I'm trying custom orthotics after dealing with shin pain for a years.

I had a tibia stress fracture that I took 8 weeks off for and it still would ache for a while after that but never really properly hurt. Some phantom pain is normal, but if it hurts to press on, or you feel pain on impact it is definitely not healed. Since yours does still hurt to press on I would take one more week off and then start back up again very slowly. Like 4x2minsrun/1min walk for the first one.

Hi I responded to you on the other thread you created. I had one in my sacrum, so quite different, but still a stress fracture. Stress fractures hurt long after they’re healed. I returned to running in March and I still have pain sometimes today. Don’t worry about the remaining pain unless you go for your first run/walk and it still hurts during in the SAME exact way as before. Pain when you think you should be healed/are healed is normal and will happen, but for me at least it felt a little bit different than the original injury and happens usually after my runs. When I first hurt my sacrum sitting on it hurt a lot. When I was healed, and even today, sitting in a way still hurts, which is similar to your fork test.

But yes I agree that if you cannot hop on it then it is truly not healed. I could hop just fine with no pain, even while sitting on it hurt and other little things too.

Had a stress fracture in my tibia back in 2008. Still hurts to this day, although I suspect some of this is from some trauma the area of the leg faced back when I was 13 or so back in 2002.
mine was bad, didn’t run for 7 months because I never felt like it was healing, then just started running again even with pain because I couldn’t wait any longer. Never got back to full fitness, quit completely 1 year later.

If I hope on one leg I don't get any pain but my tibia is always tender to touch on one lump.

ok, i'm no longer paranoid.

i decided not to use the crutches and did pretty much the opposite by walking A LOT yesterday. there might have been some slight additional uncomfortableness in the evening, but it was by far the most movement i've done since i stopped running and didn't seem to do anything bad.

i'm probably not as close to running as i'd like, but i was worried that i'd not be able to walk for another month.

ps. this is the only thread i've made on this, so if you were talking to someone else with a stress fracture in a different thread, it was not me!

it's hard to know what is a stress reaction (the stage before a fracture that can still hurt) and what is a stress fracture. a complete fracture of the bone is obvious because you won't be able to walk. everything else needs an MRI to determine the severity. mine healed in about 6-8 weeks with only 1-2 weeks off from running completely and the last 6-7 weeks or so running less than normal. i tried to run in that first 1-2 weeks and it just wasn't possible without limping, I DNF'd a 21k race because i was reduced to a limping walk. i think in my case based on the healing time it was probably a stress reaction or maybe a very minor fracture.

"2 months later i am still having 2/10 dull pain pretty much all of the time, and it gets slightly worse if i have done a lot of walking or standing that day."

i'm no doctor but this sounds good to me, you are working the area and getting blood moving through which is what heals it. and you are doing so without pain. some discomfort is fine and normal, it's when it becomes painful that you need to stop.

Hi sorry it was a big coincidence! The person I responded to also had a title that said something like “stress fracture - how’s it supposed to feel?” like yours and then their username was snowy1230 or something like that while you’re is snowdays. Just got a little mixed up because of weird similarities

I got a stress fracture in January 2021. I have had two recurrences since then and have not returned anywhere near full training (all diagnosed with MRI). The latest recurrence was in March this year. It is definitely normal to experience light pain or tightness around the bone 8 weeks after the injury. I would recommend some plyometric drills before you return to running. If it is in anyway sensitive to touch then definitely do not run on it.

I'm being cautious this time and working with an MSK doctor and a highly regarded physio in London. After the latest injury I took 8 weeks completely off (I took 4 months for the first injury but the doc said this is too long). I then got another MRI which showed no fracture or even bone stress (that said, I still feel pain/tightness). After 8 weeks off I did two weeks of polymeric drills and light S&C work. I then began doing some light running in the form of 1 min on/off on grass. I have been building up my running for the last three months and last week I did 3x8k runs. These runs were completely pain free but I can tell it is still fragile. I used to run 90mpw before the initial injury so I still have a long way to go and will probably not get back anywhere near where I was unfortunately. It's a shame because I am 24 and male and these injuries should heal well but I guess you can get unlucky.

I had a stress fracture in my metatarsal on my left foot, so I’m not sure how closely this compares. The doctor I saw held me out from physical activity for 2-3 months because he was convinced any “weirdness” meant the fracture wasn’t healed. By the tail end of this, I had no pain when walking, passed jump test, but did have some small pain when pressing the site and a bit more when massaging the tissue around the site.

eventually, my coach had enough of this. He decided to start deep, massaging the site every day, then putting it in an ice bath to promote healing and blood flow there. It was not long (maybe 1-2 weeks) before I started running again with no issues. Been 2 years now and no issues

all that to say, phantom pains are very normal and should be expected. I had “weirdness” and pain in the tissue because I hadn’t been using that foot regularly for a long time and needed to re-introduce stimulation. Don’t get me wrong, the first couple days I did massage it hurt pretty bad and I thought I was making such a huge mistake. But things turned around and I’m so glad we decided to just go for it.

i would say if pain was 2/10 and weirdness was 4/10 when i made this thread, pain is now 1/10 and weirdness is 3/10.

feel way more comfortable walking. hop test hasn't hurt for a while, but my leg clearly did not WANT to hop and is fine with hopping now.

i have resumed XT on the bike.

MRI is next week. i almost feel like i don't need it at this point, but it's been a pretty f'ed up 2.5 months until recently, so i don't mind forking over the cash and waiting to run until i get a result.

Hi! I have a similar problem as you. A constant diffuse ache/stiffness that has lasted for 4 months. How are you doing today? Did the pain eventually go away?

so what happened to me was when me stress fracture healed, there was some extra regrown bone that ended up pressing a little into a nerve so i was unfortunately still in low key pain for an entire year… (june to june)

but i was running in december, and raced by april. racing quite well by summer.

you can get an MRI to confirm its healed, do PT, doc and pt both told me to run.
mentally it was annoying to have my leg tingling for such a long time but i got through it.

good luck