I dithered a lot before running this morning, then realised that physically I was feeling OK, but was on something of an endorphin dip after a very exciting weekend and that running might actually help me out of that. And I figured I may as well progress to Day 2 as it's the same as Day 1 anyway in Week 1.
Not great things:
-shin pain was with me again. Not as bad as last week: it's eased a lot now I'm home, and it wasn't the entire focus of the run. But it's more than I'm happy with, and feels more like a "this is potentially causing damage" pain than a "your muscles will get stronger and cope with this" pain.
-as a result of shin pain, I'm still walking quite slowly in the walking intervals and after the run: several people passed me on my way home. It's really hard to gauge whether my cardiovascular fitness is improving when I'm being held back by another thing.
Good things:
-I finished, and it wasn't as hard as last time.
-A flatter route does seem to be better, as does running more on grass than on pavement (not an option on the more hilly route I was taking before -- too much risk of twisting an ankle and falling down the hill sideways)
-I do, indeed, feel the same gentle pleased-with-myself happiness as I did when I first started this. I felt emotionally good about running while I was running even though it hurt, and I feel good now about having been running. Yay endorphins!
Thoughts:
-I was in my 'best' shoes today, a sort of hiking boot/trainer hybrid, and still had the shin pain. These shoes are definitely not too small. I wonder whether the extra height at the heel due to orthotics is throwing my foot forward onto my toes more when I run and causing problems. This could also be related to the feeling that the trainers I was wearing last week are too small.
-I could have
shin splints. I'm not confident that getting diagnosis and treatment for this (whether my self-diagnosis is correct) on the NHS will be anything less than a battle, and I have other healthcare battles to fight, so I'm not going to try unless it starts to interfere with walking. However, treatment is similar to that for many other soft tissue injuries: rest and ice and NSAIDs to get the inflammation under control, careful return to activity and a long hard look at ergonomics to see what is going wrong in the first place. I can do all that on my own with very little risk.
PLN:
-until the shin pain is less problematic, I'm running once a week, not twice a week. Longer recovery time (due to special snowflakeness in collagen production) is a known bug, and running once a week will still be better for me than not running at all.
-in my trainers, I'm going to take out the insoles and cut the back half off so that the position of my heels relative to my toes is not so high. This might also stop them being too small.
-I'm going to make sure I run on grass as much as possible. This may mean a more repetitive route, especially while I'm still in Enfield, but it is actually a bit of a no-brainer that I should have caught before.