Resolved: shin splints

I think I mentioned in one of my first posts that I’ve had pain in my right shin for the past 5-6 weeks and that’s why I haven’t been running. This was particularly unfortunate, since I wanted to build up enough of a base to run a half marathon by the end of the summer… but that’s obviously impossible when even walking gingerly is a painful activity. I think my last run was 4.5 weeks ago, when I limped home in pain and I’ve been off my feet since.

On Monday, 3 days ago, I finally went to see a doctor, mostly to rule out a stress fracture, since I had heard/read that sometimes the two conditions present with similar symptoms, but obviously a stress fracture is more serious. Now I kind of wish I hadn’t gone and just waited a couple more days, because the pain has faded drastically since my visit and all he did was put a tuning fork to my leg, vibrate it, and upon seeing my lack of reaction, announced that my tibia was all intact. If I had a stress fracture, he assured me that I would have been howling from the vibration. Not sure if the visit was worth however much I’ll have to pay when the bill arrives, but at least it calmed my nerves.

He did send me home with a “therabland,” basically a glorified resistance band. For stretching, he explained, as he handed me a packet of moves. In addition, I’m thinking about tying it up to my pull-up bar for doing assisted pullups. *beams*

In the meantime, I also retired my old shoes, which probably had 500-600 miles on them. As you can see, I’m pretty stingy with money and I love old stuff… but avoiding injured is my first priority, so new shoes were procured. They’re Adidas Supernova Sequence!

Doctor dude is giving me 2.5 more weeks of rest from running until I can give it a try again. Apparently I’m supposed to be able to sprint without pain before starting up again. There’s a 5k in the town of my high school to be held on July 12, and one of my best friends from HS asked me if I wanted to do it together… I hope I can, although I probably won’t go very hard since my shin troubles really only started after I raced my last 5k at a pace that was really fast for me (25:32).

I’m off to watch the NBA draft! Is anyone into basketball? I adore college basketball (I’m a dukie, so duh — GO GERALD HENDERSON!!!), and Dad is probably the biggest professional basketball fan I know, so draft night is pretty exciting in our house 🙂 So you think you can dance is also on!