Aching quads - why & how to recover them?!

pagey3 | 10:45 Wed 01st Jul 2009 | Health & Fitness

3 Answers

I have done regular exercise for about 2 yrs now about 3-4 times a week (mixture of circuit training /spinning/running 3-5km)

Recently i have stepped up my training to incorporate the cross trainer too (brilliant fat burner) and running longer distances once a week as i'm training for a half marathon (eek!)

Problem is, about 10 days ago i increased my cross training sessions from 35 minutes at level 8-9 to 40 minutes at level 10-11, which fitness-wise i found quite easy, but since then i have had very very badly aching quads. When i run i get to about 3 miles and my thighs just go to jelly, which is unusual as can usually do 5-6 miles when i do my distance runs.

Do you think i have strained them - and if so how do i stop them hurting so much??? Is it bad to run with aching quads, or should i just lay off the cross training for a bit, or just make it a lot lighter?? Or is there something i can drink/eat to help them recover?!

They are generally aching day to day as well i feel like an old woman up and down stairs!

Please help as i was making good progress on my running, and have also been enjoying losing weight and toning up - i want to make sure i can keep it up!

thanks :-)

coconut oil

Is Personal Training Effective?

Answers

1 to 3 of 3

Best Answer

No best answer has yet been selected by pagey3. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.

For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.

teag1rl

Hi Pagey 3. I'm no expert but it could just be the muscles need time to recover. Could be that by ramping up the cross-trainer it's affecting muscle like another long run and therefore like you're asking your body to do more than one long run a week which it can't do. Velvetee will probably answer-she knows about this stuff. I would ease up on the x tainer a bit-maybe keep incresed time but not all at such high level (just intervals).