Shins: you are the weakest link!

July 23, 2006

When I started this marathon training I’d been thinking that my asthma was going to be the biggest risk. But it appears that’s well under control between the daily dose of AdVair and my new habit of puffing the albuterol inhaler just before I go running. Even during the air-emergency days last week I had no difficulties with the breathing.

Now that I’m done with the first full week of training it’s looking like shins may be my Achilles Heel. Today was the long run for the week, and the shins started hurting about a mile into it. And kept hurting for a couple more miles. Nothing agonizing but enough to make them front-and-center in my mind as I was running. By the end things had calmed down but I can’t tell if that was for real or just the whole “welcome pain, come run with me” thing that made the pain seem less.

Just in case, I’m going to start taking a few precautions described in the training manual. First, taking an anti-inflammatory before I run. Going to try ibuprofen, which can cause stomach discomfort so we’ll have to see how that goes. I’ve taken it before without problems but with me running four times a week that’s a lot more ibuprofen doses than I’ve ever done before in that short a timeframe.

Second, I went to Walgreens and bought a cold-pack to ice the legs after the long run each week. This ice-pack has some kind of neat gel inside that kinda looks like Blue Ice. But even when it’s ice cold out of the freezer it’s still pliable so you can easily shape it to the body part you want to ice, in my case the shins.