Couch to 5k

I had some unpleasantness (further detail here if you are on my access list) on Monday which has left me rather out-of-sorts this week; one result is that all my joint/muscle pain is worse than usual. Annoyingly this seems to include the shin pain, even though I am being careful not to push myself for speed when getting from point A to point B.

So I didn't go to the gym Tuesday, and I'm not going today, and I will try again next week I think -- I don't know how long it will take to revert to "normal for me", but I do need to prioritise being functional for paid work and professional commitments. It's annoying, because the endorphins from exercise (even the walking) would probably help me get back to normal sooner as well as make me feel a bit better, but the risk of injury is just too high.

Shin pain is back.

I am upset about this. I wasn't even running.

It started before I even did the first "faster" interval, when I was still walking 5km/h. Maybe I should have just stopped then, or done 40min at 5kph and left it at that.

I kept going anyway, telling myself it wasn't *that* bad. This may have been a mistake, in terms of recovery and not aggravating an existing injury, but I think I would be feeling even worse now if I hadn't completed the set.

Possible causes:
-last night I was running late for a service I was leading, so I walked faster than normal to get to church on time. I rather legged it, in fact, and was pleased with myself for having walked a mile in under 20 minutes. It didn't hurt at the time. I've been walking a lot: church is just over a mile and I am there most days, sometimes twice, so I'm walking two to four miles most days; most of the time, this doesn't cause me problems. In general my joints have been pretty good lately and I haven't taken any painkillers for a few days, so I don't think I masked pain with medication or anything like that.
-er, not sure what else. I don't think it was caused by walking faster for 5 minute intervals instead of 3 minutes, or anything, because it started before then.
-I'm starting to wonder if the orthotics are actually causing part of the problem. They're "half-orthotics", which means they're only under the back half of my foot, and they're stiffer than the shoe in the front part of my foot. Could I be over-working my calves/shins because that part of my step is more flexible? But without the orthotics, I get hip and back pain, which slows me down a lot more and probably involves long-term damage.

PLN:
-Accept that it isn't fair and allow myself to have a bit of a sulk. Grah to hypermobility. Hmph.
-On Thursday, try the same programme again, with all the speeds cut by .5kph. Decide after that what to do next.
-If I continue to have ongoing problems, maybe try those horrid elliptical machine things. I hate these, but I haven't really used them since before I got the orthotics, so maybe they won't make my hip hurt so much now. They don't involve so much lifting feet and putting them down again, so may be gentler.
-Think about how this programme could be adapted to cycling, which I have had more success with in the past.
-If that also doesn't work, look into spending serious money on shoes, gait analysis and so on, or possibly getting different orthotics (even more serious money, if the NHS says "You get shinsplints when you walk fast? Walk slowly then!").


Good things:
-I have a PLN
-I walked a mile in under 20 minutes last night, and regularly walk two to four miles in a day. That's not bad going. In 2007 I couldn't walk to the end of the road without serious back pain, so even if I'm having some minor problems now, I've definitely improved.
-Between the walking (and attempts at running in January), rowing (so far this does not seem to exacerbate shin pain), and various other things, I appear to have dropped a dress size since Christmas. Now, I'm not doing this to lose weight or get smaller, or even weighing myself or using measuring tape! However it is gratifying to see some results in the form of changes to my body, even if they are changes I am trying not to care about.

It has been wet enough here over the last several months that Wanstead Flats, where I like to walk, is consistently quite soggy. So I finally bit the bullet and did some walking on the treadmill at the gym.

I like it more than I thought I would. Noise-cancelling headphones are an asset as the background music at the gym is not pleasant; the headphones don't entirely get rid of it, but they make it quiet enough that I can listen to something else. But the ground isn't uneven and I don't have to try to avoid dog poo or fox poo and it doesn't rain and, well, as much as I love being outside, I tend to get distracted by the plants.

The treadmills at the gym have options for time, distance or calories to use as goals. I've been setting the time as 40min, then gradually increasing speed to 5km/h, then starting the "C25K" app on my phone. When it's time for a "running" interval I put the treadmill speed up to 6.5km/h, and the "brisk walking" speed is 5.5km/h. When the app on the phone tells me I am finished, I walk at 6km/h until my time is up (usually around 15 minutes).

So far this seems to be OK, though in fairness I've only done it twice. The extra time at the end is so that if I'm having a bad joint day, I can reduce the amount I'm doing but probably still complete the C25K aspect of the programme; it's mostly a psychological gimmick. My plan is to continue doing this until I have finished the programme or get injured (let's hope not), then repeat but with all speeds higher by .5km/h. I'm still aiming for two sessions a week rather than three, especially as I'm currently doing some rowing on two or three other days (as recommended to me by nearly every physiotherapist I've ever had), but I am only doing each session once (rather than repeating them as I was with running). This morning I walked 3.9k total with an average speed of 5.9km/h, according to the treadmill.

I haven't decided what I will do if I find I can't walk fast enough and end up breaking into a jog, but I don't think that's likely to happen on this iteration of walking Couch to 5k.

This morning despite a good walking warm-up I was into serious shin pain about three seconds into the first running interval. I wasn't able to shift it with stretching or longer walking intervals: whatever I did, as soon as I started running again, it hurt.

So I walked fast/slow for the intervals, and thought about how I want to handle this.

I'd not had a great time of joint stuff over the weekend, which probably wasn't helping me. Yesterday was an extremely long day (up at 5am, bed well after midnight), which also didn't help.

I've already said I will keep trying to run for the rest of January, and I think I want to stick with that: my body is inconsistent enough, and sensitive enough to things like sleep levels, that I am not certain this morning's pain means I simply shouldn't run. However, I reserve the right to walk instead at any point if the shin pain (or joint pain, but so far shin pain seems to be the thing that really limits me) is like it was today -- I am not in this to hurt myself! Rather I would like to find out, gently, whether I can run, or how running might be sustainable for me. This morning was not a failure, just a data point.

I did enjoy the walk, and even if subsequent runs are all "unsuccessful" in terms of actually running, I think that establishing a habit of walking outside twice a week could do me good. Much of my day-to-day walking happens when I am carrying something (which will distort my posture) or in a slight hurry, and it's pleasant to be able to move around without encumbrance and to walk for the sake of it rather than on the way to somewhere. I'm uncertain whether posts about my walks would be within the scope of this community if I were to switch to walking as a long-term strategy, but for now I will consider them running attempts (as they are).