Pain is my friend? How does that work? Pain (most commonly soft tissue pain such as muscle, tendon or ligament) are the early warning sign your body gives you that all is not well. Wouldn’t you prefer to have a little pain in your calve that stops you from exercising for two weeks as opposed to tearing your whole muscle on your next run? This would be a much more substantial injury that would take months to heal. When soft tissue pain appears often it doesn’t take anything else to fix the problem but laying off your training and resting for a few days. So please, don’t ignore your pain. Be grateful that your body has such an amazing grading system be which it can protect you from greater harm.