Running with sore legs

I just ran five kilometres with intimidatingly tender quadriceps and hamstrings, wicked sore from a squatty workout 48-hours ago. A bit of the hair of the exercise dog that bit me! Here’s how that went:

kilometre 1 → OW! Every step hurt, and quite a bit! That’s some painful jostling!

kilometre 2 → Ow!

kilometre 3 → Ow.

kilometre 4 → Ow?

kilometre 5 → Just a little bit of ow. 🤏 Detectable, but trivial.

The soreness simmered down enough that I realized somewhere around the 3.5k point that I hadn’t thought about it in a few hundred meters. So did I actually get better? Or just … numb? What’s going on there?

We are impatient animals, and “working through it” is a popular way to try to hurry through post-exercise muscle soreness. AKA “active recovery.” But does it work? Is it safe? Here’s an old post all about that (updated some, as is my wont):

“Should you exercise when you’re still sore from the last workout?”

I’ve just emerged from the fog of the holidays. I took a more time off this time than I usually do, for both good and sad reasons (a family health crisis). This post is just a quick dose to get the 2026 blogging ball rolling. More soon!

UPDATE: My workout soreness was “cured” by running only very temporarily. It was back to full power within an hour, and remained there the next day … just when I would normally expect it to be waning. So maybe running while sore actually prolonged the soreness, despite the brief respite while actually running.