Pulled Calf Muscle

So I did a cardio stress test yesterday because my life insurance company wanted it. I've never done one before so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I knew I'd be running on a treadmill but I thought it was going to be pretty lightweight. Even so, I ran around the parking lot at the doctor's office a few times just to warm-up.

So I go in, they hook me up to an EKG harness and start me walking on a small incline. Then they speed it up a little and increase the incline. They do this two more times until I'm running at probably about a 9:15/min mile and a pretty good incline. My HR hits about 150 and we're done. Maybe 10 mins total. Then they pull me off and lie me down to see how quickly the HR recovers. The med tech remarked after a minute or two that it was already back down to 65 and that was "excellent".

All well and good - but the warm-up was minimal and the warm-down was non-existent. I didn't really think about it though because
 it was such a short little deal, but essentially it was a compact little hill run and called on the calf muscles in the same way a real hill run would have. That should have been my first clue - but what do I know?

So I come home and decided to go for a 45 minute run that was on the plan for today. About a mile in my calf starts to hurt. I stop and try to stretch it out and then just run more lightly thinking it would improve once I was warmed-up. Stopped again after mile 2 to walk for a little. Dull pain. Walk. Run lightly a little more. Pain. Stop. Walk. Pain. After 3 miles of that, I cashed it in and hitchhiked back home (cold, rainy, dark and I felt I might injure it more trying to walk the last two miles home). Rest. Ice - some of it in a short pull of bourbon.

Did enough research on calf muscle strains and tears last night so I feel I know where I am on that spectrum. Very likely Level 1 only because with anything more serious it seems I would have instantly been on the ground with pain. Shew!

Still sore and carrying a defensive hobble a bit this morning. I'll observe the rest-ice-ibuprofen-massage treatment for the next few days and see how it goes. The pain is only dull and I don't notice it when I'm not walking so I believe it's very minor, but I'm going to avoid run/cycle/ski workouts for the next week or so. I don't want something little to get big.

Moral of the story: warm-up, workout, cool-down - no exceptions!