lactic acid buildup

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21 years ago 11/01/2002 3:33am EST

I am in the final 3 weeks of marathon training. A few weeks ago I raced a half-mara, and afterwards my quads felt like they were on fire and ripped to shreds. I think this is lactic acid buildup. After a few days of easy training, it went away. However, ever since then, I have had the "heavy, dead" legs feeling on almost all my daily workouts. Can anyone help me to figure out what exactly is going on? Would a sports massage help? If this continues, I will not be able to run the marathon at the pace that I would like to hold, and maybe not even be able to coax my legs to finish. This is not my first marathon; I've run a lot of them over the last few years.

21 years ago 11/01/2002 3:50am EST

re: whiskeypriest

If they ripped to shreds how are you still able to run?

21 years ago 11/01/2002 4:11am EST

re: +

I said I felt like they were ripped to shreds. And please, I'm asking for advice, not pestering.

21 years ago 11/02/2002 6:27am EST

re: whiskeypriest

Lactic acid is cleared within an hour or so after running. What you're feeling is torn muscle fibers - microtears. A massage probably isn't a bad idea, but the most important thing is to recognize that the difficulty you are having running is because your body is trying to heal. Rest as much as you will let yourself for a few days, and then make sure that you get a few runs of decent intensity (speed, not necessarily distance) in.

21 years ago 11/02/2002 6:59am EST

re: whiskeypriest

My opinion is that you are overtraining.

There was a huge thread a few weeks ago on the tapering issue - use "tapering" in the search and look at it.

Personally - I agree with the guy who says that you be resting, and doing little or no running from now on. You need you muscles on a cellular level to repair and regenerate - and running more and more is not going to do that. You arent going to lose aerobic fitness in the space of a few weeks. Take care of yourself and be sensible. Marathon running is part a mental game when you are out there - so use so sense now, and back off from the training.

good luck for your race

21 years ago 11/02/2002 12:28pm EST

re: PTrunner

I have heard that about lactic acid before as well, and from what I have learned you are right on about microtears, but some have suggested the possibility that it is not the presence of lactic acid which causes longer term muscle soreness (ie 12-36 hours) but it may be components resulting from the breakdown of lactic acid.

As far as massaging goes, I have heard that a lot of soreness the day after comes from the body laying down scar tissue over microtears in the muscle (generall this occurns overnight) and that massaging can realign this scar tissue and increase blood flow to the area to facilitate healing and scar tissue removal. The catch is that I heard this from a massage therapist who was working on me (for free) but hey maybe he was still right.

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