Honestly, I agree with you (UnlimitedSteel) that running through it is not gonna make things better… I just KNOW what kind of pain this is, and for sprinting, it just doesn’t do any benefit… You lose your spring, it’s hard to get a good explosive start, once you’re done with one sprint, you’re pretty much done with the whole session because more pain comes afterwards… it’s frustrating and counter productive.
With me, the key to making my shins better was taking off from running when they got really bad (like you), and then gradually get back into running (this was like 6 weeks after I stopped…it took a while, but I’m known for not taking “completely” off…I was always doing something, non-track related though)
Last year, they ALMOST came back in the fall. I fought them to death (literally
) when I felt the SLIGHTEST hint of irritation. See…that’s the key… As soon as you feel the slightest, you are immediately reminded that your calves are too strong for your shins, or simply your shins are just not strong, or your calves are just not stretched enough…or all of the above (my case :rolleyes: )
This year, I have had some MINOR irritation as well, and I’m walking on my heels a lot, stretching my calves all the time during lifting sesssions especially when there’s not much to do during breaks (other than abs…), doing all tempo on grass, having good warm ups. IT WORKS… There are sessions when I don’t feel absolutely anything. When I feel something is usually when the weather is crappy and when I have a not so thorough warm up. I am pretty confident that they won’t give me further problems, since I was able to fight them last year as well.
- Let your shins recover!
- Strengthen your shins and stretch your calves a lot (there are a lot of shin strengthening exercises, that you probably already know and have tried, but remember: they don’t really work while the pain is there, you have to let the pain settle first)
- SLOWLY get back into running, on soft surfaces first.
It’s really not that big of a deal taking some time off and taking care of this, because I’m sure you’ve felt that 1.5 years training in pain has been only frustrating and not fun!! Who wants to train seriously when it’s not fun??
I have the hardest time taking even a couple of days off, but some things need attention to see good results.
Besides…you can always do tempo workouts in the pool and biking interval speed sessions, and trust me… they do work to some extend… I pr’ed couple of years back both in the 200 and 400 just coming from pool and bike workouts that lasted 6 weeks (I was out with stress fractures then). You can make some good workouts out of them…
Enough for now
Let us know how it goes.