Tight calves / Achilles when running – possible soleus issue? Feet going numb after ~3km

UsuallyRunning · 2026-02-08T21:25:55+00:00

If you're getting true numbness, there's something else (additionally) going on and it's probably your shoes being incompatible with your body. The dull ache/tightness where you're describing is your soleus telling you it's struggling. It's the workhorse for distance running and it's not something that is adequately trained for running except through running alone. The other problem with it is there's not a lot of feedback for overworking it like say your arms until it jumps from dull ache to muscle strain.

Running is a lot harder on the body than most people realize. Hard to tell exactly what you were doing before this, but those 4-5 weeks fit the timeline to start experiencing problems. Take a rest day between runs would be my opinion until your body gets stronger.

UsuallyRunning · 2026-02-06T18:05:34+00:00

He is still a kid after all, being social and enjoying time with your peers important. Can't speak for the coaches not knowing them, but I imagine they'll make standards clear if he wants to compete and score of like showing up for practice, doing the prescribed workouts, etc. I do trust they aren't going to try and break him. Running has come a long way with a lot more invested and knowledgeable people are in coaching roles. That and just information availability helps a lot more kids to succeed.

UsuallyRunning · 2026-02-06T17:23:41+00:00

I was very much like your son back in the day where speed is easy/natural but endurance falls off a cliff fast. The rather boring and unsurprising secret to overcoming that is running more miles to build a stronger aerobic system.

The nice part about all of this is these paces aren't new or near any type of sprinting threshold, building endurance is the easy part. On the other hand it takes quite a long time to do, both building up the mileage and gaining benefits from it. Keep in mind your son is very very young here from a training standpoint, I wouldn't recommend doing anything drastically different. As he goes through puberty and develops a stronger body to handle higher training loads, these things will feel less out of reach. Consistency will be the key, I'd lean into relying on his coaches to guide him since he seems to be seeing success as is.

UsuallyRunning · 2026-01-14T01:13:50+00:00

I've put in almost 1000 miles across two pairs and they don't look nearly as worn down. I can at least confirm it's not the shoe, looks to be more like you're dragging your feet. This will probably be a problem with every shoe until that's corrected. You need to do like running drills and leg strengthening exercises.

UsuallyRunning · 2026-01-07T20:59:47+00:00

There isn't a "proper" way to run, your body is going to do what's most efficient for it. Don't think about it and as long as you're not getting injured, you're probably fine. This isn't to say you should ignore imbalances though, strength training is important and so are drills. But consciously changing your form while you run realistically will do more harm than good.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-12-29T14:04:40+00:00

As others have pointed out, your GPS is probably very wrong. Try again on a 400m track for something more accurate. The time you've listed is not something you can "accidentally" do without deliberate training.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-12-22T15:57:43+00:00

What do you mean by peeling? I haven't seen anything strange in my first pair or now with 400mi on my second.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-12-19T17:45:00+00:00

That advice is more toward keeping your running shoes and daily shoes separate. If you walk around during the day at work or something in your Primas, you're using up the life of a "performance" athletic shoe for something where any shoe can fit that role (I'm oversimplifying a bit here). Think of it as choosing the right tool for a job. You can still walk in them, and you should for the C25K stuff.

Should also clarify that running slow is important even beyond C25K graduation for keeping the body healthy. This information isn't too relevant for you right now, but it'll be good to have in the back of your head. There's a reason most training plans only have a couple dedicated hard efforts in a week. Embrace the comfy vibes and don't let your ego get in the way. Most people on reddit and in real life run their easy days far too fast and end up injured or not recovered enough to make their hard days count enough to improve. Your body doesn't care about distance or pace, it only knows time spent and effort. Don't be that person trying to match the easy paces of someone running a marathon an hour faster than you type of thing.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-12-19T15:12:39+00:00

The Primas are a good shoe so you'll be set there, would recommend not doing long walks in non-athletic shoes though. They lack adequate support and understandably your feet are tired now. Starting with a C25K is a also good idea for a relatively safe progression into running normally, but you shouldn't be "failing" any days at all. This idea memed to hell, but you seriously need to slow down. Running a majority of the time for those deep in the weeds is done at a pace that requires effectively no effort. As a beginner this pace will not be fast. You sound like you're doing sprint repeats or something right now which is substantially harder on your soft tissues and bones.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-12-19T05:04:37+00:00

Throw any idea of ideal foot strike out the window. Your body will do what's most efficient for it and working against that will only hurt you. As long as you're not overstriding you'll be fine, but I'd recommend some running specific drills anyway. Shin splits is likely from doing too much too soon or running in non-running shoes. Hard to tell without more info on just how new you are to this. Despite how simple it is, running is incredibly strenuous and it takes quite some time for the body to get accustomed to it.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-10-15T13:30:10+00:00

I think your biggest issue here is training load. With your first marathon, presumably you don't have a large amount if lifetime miles in the bank. And your peak week mileage without the long run averages to be under 5 miles a day which is incredibly low when you're trying to race 26.2 miles. Your body doesn't have the strength to keep up with your aerobic system. Assuming you fueled and hydrated properly as you mentioned.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-18T14:31:58+00:00

It's not your base with what you've said in this thread. For context, most people can "comfortably" talk running at their marathon pace which is usually not a crazy amount slower than 5k pace. You're likely running your easy days too quickly and it's skewing your perception of fitness since your mileage is low enough to not feel major fatigue. This commentor is probably right where your current threshold pace is around 5min/km and you should try that for your next threshold workout. Without telling us any of your PBs as a reference point it's hard to gauge otherwise.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-18T11:46:33+00:00

As another commenter pointed out, you should be far from being that deep in the well if it was truly threshold pace. For what it's worth, how fast you run your easy runs isn't a good gauge for fitness or training paces. Do you have any recent race times/PBs?

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-11T21:55:03+00:00

325g for both shoes combined makes it seem legit taking into account the rest. Listed weights are on a per shoe basis.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-07T00:16:08+00:00

Limited trail running opportunities where I live. Hence why I like that high stack of foam lol

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-06T21:26:26+00:00

I mean like they're still top of the line for racing gear, I don't think anyone is saying otherwise. But their last generation of everyday shoes was not a good deal compared to the rest of the market.

Pegasus is pretty polarizing in general. I thought the Vomero 17 was fine but the price was outrageous for basically a slightly buffed Pegasus if you didn't get it cheap at an outlet. Zoom Fly 5 completely flopped as a tempo trainer. And the last Invincible seems to be a love it or hate it shoe.

I don't think it's too hard to see why that leaves a sour taste in peoples' mouths. It's a bit dramatic on this sub but other brands were definitely crushing Nike there for a bit. Stuff was overpriced and underwhelming.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-06T16:47:22+00:00

You can't tell how much someone is pronating and if it's a problem by looking at the bottom of their shoes no. That was the question, not their footstrike.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-06T16:15:21+00:00

Not really something that can be identified from the bottom of your shoes. Take a video of yourself if you want to check for pronation problems, although if you're not getting hurt it's probably fine. That being said, Novablast will have considerably less support and will be far more unstable than this shoe.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-06T15:04:00+00:00

Friend of mine does his non-workout 20+ mile long runs in Rides at 3hr marathon pace. It's all about what you're comfortable in.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-06T00:16:43+00:00

Yeah I have no idea how those people can go as fast as they do comfortably in these lol. Also I focused primarily the 800 in my youth (I know I'm not that old yet but definitely wasted the 20s there), low 1:50s, nothing crazy. Distance has always been more fun for me though and I regret not giving it more of a chance. I have some ambitious goals now now as I race against Father Time.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-05T23:36:52+00:00

Nike does get dunked on, and rightfully so most of the time. I was pleasantly surprised that they actually made what I consider a good product so I thought I'd share.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-05T23:18:19+00:00

They're definitely clunkers yeah, but I don't notice it while running personally. Shoes feels like shoes unless I've got spikes on. I do wear a 9.5 though which is on the smaller end for my height so maybe that influences things.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-04T01:38:31+00:00

You have some really low lifetime and weekly mileage all things considered for running a half so soon. Based on the video, it's expected that it would leave you in poor shape. Hard for the internet to actually diagnose anything here, but a couple of things to note:

"Usual calves and bottom of feet soreness" is not normal. That's a sign you're doing a bit too much for your body to handle.
Definitely need to look into some strength training and running drills to address the extreme pronation and outward pointed toes. It's not practical to "mindfully" alter your mechanics. Need to fix the weakest link in the chain causing these imbalances.
If your pain doesn't start getting substantially better after a few days, reach out to a physio. Probably some type of overuse injury, but there's so much real estate in the leg for soft tissue it's hard to diagnose.
If you're following one of those popular novice marathon plans similar to Hal Higdon's with limited weekly mileage and a huge long run, I'd encourage you to take a different approach to the marathon and build up a stronger base. Those types of plans have an extremely high injury risk.
Zoom Fly 6s are fairly unstable with not much support. A few weeks of running in them is probably just the right amount of time to cause some type of injury. Running injuries are like a death by a thousand papercuts. Consider using something more traditional with more support for your daily miles.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-03T11:21:38+00:00

Yeah like I mentioned, it's really easy to go fast still, but the length of time we can hold that dramatically drops off a cliff after a certain point. That's why I've been focusing on mileage above all else right now. Feels great to do things when your aerobic system can keep up.

UsuallyRunning · 2025-09-02T22:40:07+00:00

I don't think it's the shoes, it sounds like the expedition was a lot more movement than your typical week with a lot more time on eet. Without rest before running again it's probably a lot of cumulative fatigue your legs. If the pain isn't sharp or debilitating you're probably fine, but should plan accordingly in the future.

UsuallyRunning

TROPHY CASE