Status Update

I have come to the conclusion that for my particular body, wraping my shins when I have shin splints does not work, and it amplifies the problem. Saturday I did not wrap my shins, and I felt rather good. I did not do anything really out of the ordinary that day to irritate it. Then Sunday came and I forgot to wrap it as we had load in day for dance, where we spent 12 hours getting lights and stuff like that ready for our dance performance. My shins felt great. Today I wraped them for the first half of today and they hurt. It took it off and a couple hours later the pain was gone.

So bye bye Mr. Ace Bandage as far as shin splints are concerned. Given my lack of progress I only jogged a quarter of a mile today after the ace bandage came off, and I felt ok, a little tender at the end of the run. Tommorow perhaps I will go for a whole mile and see where I am at.

4th day rest

Today is my 4th day of rest after bad shin splints. Two weeks ago I took 4 days off, and I felt pretty good the week after, but then I got injured again. So perhaps I will take it another day or two. Perhaps Monday I will go for a short jog. I don't know, I will take it as it comes.

But right now I am icing, and taking ibuprofen. Every once in a while if I am shopping and walking a lot I will feel my shins hurting just a bit. I will then sit down for a while until I am good again. This is probably not a good sign, but it takes a lot of walking to get that to happen.

I'll update you all agian on Monday at least, perhaps even tommorow.

Keep on running!

Today was GREAT! But I lost some shoes today...

Today I rested. Granted I did have a dance rehearsal, but that does not do NEARLY the same to my legs as say running. My shins were to be honest a bit sore today, and probably will be tomorrow, but I plan on taking them out for a test drive. Not the 45min fartlek that is scheduled, (unless they feel great) but rather something more like a jog around the block a couple times.

I am also beginning to suspect that my every day sneakers are to blame for this. I recently threw out my old shoes because they had many holes in them. I then unearthed in my closed a pair of Nike running shoes that I had a couple years ago. I am pretty sure I did not even get 500 miles out of them, but I know I was close. But the reason I replaced them was because I could start to tell that they were causing me discomfort during my runs. But I thought that if I was just walking in them and not running, I should be fine.

Wrong. I think I will stick with shoes that do not hurt me now, and these shoes of mine, even though they look just fine are crap now. I have to add them to my garbage and kiss my shin splints good bye.

So the moral of the story. Converting old running shoes into everyday sneakers may seem like penurious advice, but not only are they not stylish, but they will hurt you.

Final Hill Repeat of the Spring!

Today was my final hill repeat of the spring according to Hal, and he took me out with a bang. I was to do 10 of them. And oh boy, for as much as I like the challenge of hill repeats, I am very glad to be finished. I guess some of it does have to do with the hill I run. Its a cement sidewalk which is not always very forgiving on the bones, the hill is fairly steep, and runs up the middle of a valley. This creates large gusts of winds that blow down it, and right into my face as I run up it. And to top things off, there is a highway overpass that seemto channel the wind even more as I reach the top. It was tough, but damn it I did it!

Aside from today being my last hill repeat, it was also WARM and SUNNY! So for the first time this year, I got to take off my shirt, put on some sunblock, and go running. I really like the feeling of having the sun on my back as I run, it just feels good. Plus the tan I end up getting is not half bad either. It really feels like summer is starting to come after a very wicked winter!

One down side to today was some real bad cramping I had in my calf today. This I believe stemmed from a slight cramp I started to get Sunday and even Monday. Then today the cramp got to be very bad and even though I was able to run my repeats pretty fine, I did have to walk the last .5 miles back home. Not a terrible thing, but OK.

Then while I was walking through Target with my girlfriend, I started to get shin splints :(
I am going to try and take care of them just like I did before, and I might even skip tommorow's recovery run and replace it with some biking or perhaps some walking/slow jogging. We'll see but just when I though I was back on track...nope.

But I am still optimistic that perhaps this episode is attributed mostly to my calf muscle and not the same one that was troubling me earlier in my training.

Two Recovery Days = Half-Marathon?

Sunday and Monday I was supposed to just do a couple of recovery runs. No big deal, just jog a little bit and get ready for next week. Well on Sunday I started running, and just did not want to stop since I was feeling very good and knew I had another recovery day on Monday. In the end I ran 11 miles that day. Then yesterday I ran 2.5 in real recovery run fashon. So for two "recovery days" I ran 13.5 miles, which is just over a half-marathon.

I think I should have just stuck with 3 miles a day for those two runs, since I feel a little run down right now, but it is not too bad. I guess we'll see when I run my 10x Hill repeates today, which just so happen to be the last hill repeats I will do for Hal's spring training. After today it will be all track work on Tuesdays.

The results are in!

19:30

I finished 3rd overall out of about what I estimate to be about 250 people so I was very excited. I got second place in my division and now have a shinny new medal. What I guess is really cool is that I was able to stay within sight of the leaders at all times. All of these experiences are new to me so I am just busting.

The race started out at 8:35 in the morning, so it was just starting to warm up and the frost was thawing on the grass. I started in the second row, not wanting to get caught up in the quick start, but not wanting to get behind everybody. Funny little kid was in front of me, he had to be about 12. I did not have the heart to tell him that he would never be able to keep the pace of the front couple people, so I let him sprint out of the start. He lasted about 200 meters until I passed him, but he was still running pretty quick. I think I saw him cross the finish line in a little over 30min.

But at those 200 meters I was about 15 to 20th, and we started to run up a hill. It was not a very big, steep, or long hill, but when I reached the top I was in 5th. I stayed behind a guy with a white shirt for the frist mile then since the wind was blowing in our face, and I wanted to use him, plus he was running at a pretty good pace. Then once we turned the corner I passed him up and started working on the next guy.

The next guy stayed with the leaders for the frist mile and then started to rapidly drop off. I finally passed him at about 2 miles and just had the leaders in my sights. I was counting the times between me and them and I realized that I was starting to catch up to them. I tried to pick up the pace just a little bit more and see if I had a shot. But it was too little too late and they beat me. But that last surge of mine put a good min or so between me and the guy in 4th. So I finished my frist race outside of middle school track in the top 3. top 10 even!

I would like to thank Hal for his training program, and my Nike waffles for making me fast. I'm real excited now and I can't wait for my next race. I just have to decide which one. But I want to run one in two weeks!

Woooooooo hooooooooo

I race tommorow

I am ready to goto sleep and race tommorow morning. The weather forcast is supposed to have temps of around 35-40 degrees F during the run. No to little wind is expected as well. I have my waffles with me, lets see how fast they can make me run!

I'll post tommorow with the time of my run

And for the record today was the frist non-injury day that I have not run for over a month! yay me! (Gotta get those legs rested for tommorow)