Saturday, August 9, 2014

Not again!

For the past almost 3 weeks I've started my running with 10 minutes of walking and then gone into a run/walk pattern, most often 90 seconds running with 45-60 seconds walking for a total of 3+ miles. I've been doing this 4 days a week, quadrupling my distance compared to before coming up to Colorado. I thought that by walking my first 2 workouts and taking all the walk breaks on the rest that I was easing into the extra distance appropriately (mostly anyway, but my left shin has been hurting again along the inside, basically feels tight, but it's hard to massage.

Yesterday, with minimal warm-up, I ran a whole mile without walking, walked about a tenth, jogged another half, then walked the rest of the way back to my room and stretched. The inside of my left shin still hurts, and I'm starting to get worried about fractures. When I put my left heel on a low wall to stretch my hamstring, I felt strain just inside and alongside my shin bone near the middle. I don't think it is localized as when I did have stress fractures. Additionally, I can't feel any localized pain when I press with my thumb alongside my shin, so that helps me feel better. I was just looking at my numbers and realized that I just quadrupled my (originally short) distance as soon as I got here to this class; I didn't ease into it as much as I thought I did. I started off walking, primarily b/c of gaining 5000' in altitude, but I've been doing 3+ miles 4 days a week for the last 3 weeks and wasn't anywhere close to that (unless I was bicycling) before then.  Yesterday's distance was less but with a solid 12 minutes of running as opposed to all the walk breaks I'd been taking.
I picked up some more fruits and veggies yesterday--and a couple of not so healthy things, but the more and harder I exercise, the lower my tolerance for sugar and junk.