Originally Posted by buzzbee

a quick update.
My wife and I just got back from a walking trip, 137 miles, with perhaps 16,000' of up and down. This was the trip I was worried about for quad pain. The pain has been present for at least 3 years, perhaps because I've been bike commuting 6000-7000 mi/yr for that long, so my bike/hike ratio was too high(?).
The doctors/PTs suggested I might have a muscle imbalance creating nerve irritation on the femoral nerves (both legs). It's a theory, and no other medical problems could be found.

I decided to try to get even more muscle flexibility. Over time, I found that what helped me prevent the quad pain (I do not have knee pain), or greatly lessen the intensity, was to stretch much more than I was doing. So, before the walk, I was stretching at least 15-20 min twice a day, I was especially stretching the quads, hip flexors, and hamstrings. I brought a spare inner tube on the trip to help with the quad stretches. Also, when I started to feel pain during a downhill section, I stopped and stretched for a couple of minutes. I also found that messaging the muscles made things worse, so I only stretched and did not rub or use rollers on the muscles. Using this routine, I made it through the entire trip with relatively little pain, and in the last 75 miles, I had no quad pain at all.
So far, so good, it's a work in progress.
I hope others can share their experience.