Soleus muscle, a flat, broad muscle of the calf of the leg lying just beneath the gastrocnemius muscle. It arises from the upper portions of the tibia and fibula, the bones of the lower leg, and then joins with the gastrocnemius to attach via the Achilles tendon at the heel.
And here's a shot:
It feels better today. Not painful but I feel it, especially the first few steps after sitting.
My forced layoff from the bike has been made a little bit easier by the fact that it's been cold AF (overnight low in the upper 20's). Today is a bit warmer (high of 50) but I'm going to give it another day then perhaps try an easy ride on the Hampsten tomorrow.
In analyzing how this came about with an eye toward preventing a recurrence it seems fairly clear that my extended time of riding the 'bent exclusively did a pretty decent job of helping me maintain both fitness and leg strength but the position and specific muscle groups used were not exactly the same and that was the problem. It did a good enough job that I felt like I could make a hard effort when the truth was I needed some time to readjust to riding the DF.
In one part of the 200K, about 25 miles in there's a big climb on Gypsum Mine road. As I noted previously, I was really encouraged by how good my legs felt in my first rides on the Hampsten and I was feeling pretty good at that point. I hit that climb pretty hard with the goal of doing the whole climb seated (it peaks at 19%) and pushing hard the whole way. Post-injury analysis pretty strongly suggests that's when I strained the soleus. As noted previously, it started to feel sore further on in my ride and multiple stops to stretch didn't help.
I'm a bit worried about doing even a short ride but am hopeful that an easy spin will aid healing rather than cause a regression. We'll see.
In looking back through my last dozen or posts you'd get the impression that I'm a delicate lotus blossom that the slightest breath of cold will wither. In fact, for the most part the opposite is true and perhaps that's why I go on so much about any injuries I get. I've been an athlete all my life and have done a variety of sports over the years. For all that time I've been injury free the vast majority of the time. Modulo falling off the bike (which I've done twice) and nagging back ailments (mostly brought on by me doing something non-bike related and stupid) I've been remarkably injury free.
Hoping to get back to that soon.
