It’s been six long weeks of suffering through shin splints. I still can’t believe how painful it has been. During this time period, I have not even been able to run a block. All I’ve been doing is some weight training, elliptical and spin. But what I’ve really been doing is shopping! Even if I could hardly walk, I trolled the racks at TJ Maxx and Marshalls to find bargains for running attire and actually found some amazing deals, So, I was happy I had the opportunity to use my extra time to spend a little money on running gear.
One item I bought online was The Stick, a device that helps massage your shins and calves. It actually worked pretty well. I was introduced to it in Disney at their expo. The Stick people had a big booth there and one of the sales people let me try it out.
I also purchased Kinesio tape. I’ve seen athletes at the gym wearing the tape and I’ve seen athletes at the Olympics wearing it too. I figured I would try it out. It worked well with my compression sleeves, so I wore both for weeks at a time.
This past weekend, I finally felt better. I don’t know if it was the new products I purchased or the time off, but I couldn’t believe how easy it was to walk up and down the stairs again without feeling pain. I knew that since the NYC Half Marathon was only eight weeks away, I needed to get a schedule together, so I searched on the Internet and found several different programs.
Some of the programs kept to short runs throughout the training, while others encouraged the runner to run long runs. I’m going to try a combination of both in order to be injury-free.
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