Being a lifelong athlete, I’ve spent many hours biking, running and adventuring, often taking the ability to push my body to its limits for granted. However, over the last 2.5 years, my capacity to do this has been majorly reduced, with a right leg that has been sore, heavy and, at times, slightly numb during exercise.
It started off with a feeling of being twisted, like I was using my left leg more than my right. I was only about 9 months postpartum, so I put it down to the effects of pregnancy, carrying my son around a lot on one side, or maybe, sitting weirdly at my desk while working. One physio diagnosed me with weak glutes and I dutifully completed months of glute exercises with no improvement in my symptoms. About 6 months passed and I started getting a random tight cramp-like feeling in my leg while running. I could still run through it, so I took the approach of ignoring it, until finally, a few weeks after completing a 3-day adventure race, my leg completely cramped up while trying to compete in our local 5 km series, leaving me barely able to run. This led to visits to another two physios, neither of them being able to explain why it felt like my muscles were being intensely squeezed about 2 minutes into exercise of any intensity above an easy pace. In addition to this, I now had the strange new symptom of pins and needles in my foot while exercising.