FraidyKat thought she had banished the bain of runners many long and painful moons ago but it appears they are as infectous as nano-gremlins and zombie bites. Just when you think you're safe the dreaded shin splints strike.
First it's a vague aching down the shin bone, then a persistant niggle, then pounding jarring pain on the run (with the occasional blissful stretch of numbness if you're lucky), then you are reduced to a pained hobble for several weeks until it heals. If you don't modify your training after that you'll just go through the cycle all over again. - I know, I made that mistake.
Most of the time, again if you're lucky, you'll just have strained the muscles around your skin bone or perhaps inflamed the protective sheath around the bone. If you're really unlucky you'll have damaged the bone to the point of fracture, tiny stress fractures that Doctor's struggle to diagnose until it's so far gone you're virtually unable to walk without agony.
I get the former, muscle and inflammation, painful but not ruinous with the judicious application of ice, ibruprofen and rest (tubigrip helps too if you don't mind the sexy skin ridges when you take it off!).
The latter, well, catch it early and give it healing time, it's all you can do. FraidyKat went to Uni with someone who didn't get it in time and was forced to take a medical discharge from the Army when he was told it would take several years to properly heal because it was left for so long. It was a hard thing for him come to terms with. Don't ever let it get that far.
In the spirit of catching it early I have taken the very reluctant decision to take another break from running. As it is only at the vague ache stage I have only had a short break, a 2miler on Tuesday and no more running until tomorrow. I'll see how it goes and if it's bad I'll cut the run short and have a longer break. What a #*&^*£"&!!!! Sorry for the top row speech but it's so frustrating to keep getting set backs.
If it is worse than I hope then I'll be hitting the weights so I at least get some training done. No excuse to vegetate just because I can't do high impact work and especiailly when my strength still needs improvement.
Update to come, ice blocks at the ready...
Also on the top row speech hit list at the moment are my previously trusty bathroom scales.
Somehow at the beginning of the week I suddenly put on 3kg, over night. Not believing this I asked dear partner to jump on said scales. It turns out he had also gained 3kg. Sigh, I guess that means one of the chaos daemons has jumped on them too often and knocked the calibration out. I could live with it if the weight had just jumped and remained there, it would be a hard thing to swallow but I could at least keep track of the loss, but that was not to be. I can now step on and off and seconds later step back on to find my weight has changed by up to 4kg. Oh well, more pennies to spend for a new one.
Okay, so a lot of people would say don't bother, find somewhere with scales a weigh in less often, or just go by body weight, but I need to see progress or I get demoralised really quickly (my flaw, one of many).
And I spent a few pennies, £14 actually, on a cheap set of bog standard scales, no body composition stuff (normally rubbishly inaccurate anyway according to all of the reviews), just weight. A quick jump on and, half way through the day, I have lost 1kg in the last week - that's about right and good enough for me.
Attack of the mutant zombie moles!
It would make for such a good B movie film title, but sadly it's not a film. Dear partner spent a long time in the garden today excavating the hills and it's his considered expert (?!!) opinion that they are no ordinary moles and extreme measures will be required to get rid of them. Time to get back in the lab and create some extra skinny armoured ninja ferrets. That should do the trick, just have to make sure they are immune to the virus so we don't then have zombie ferrets to deal with. Now that would be awkward.
FraidyKat Runs - with a limp
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