Another sucky short run

Photo by Jonas Nordberg on Unsplash

Run 2 of week 10 was supposed to be a bit of a landmark moment as it was the first run of my training programme without any walk breaks. It was a short run, so only 25 minutes. I ran for 40 minutes last time, so should have been achievable.

Alas, the short run struck again and I had one of my least enjoyable runs to date. For a start it was freezing, and breathing in very cold air isn't pleasant. Then, quite early on my right shin started hurting and got progressively worse. To make matters worse, there were a lot of free roaming cows on the road. They weren't particularly enamoured with me running towards them and really didn't like my metronome, so I had to do a lot of stopping and starting. Cows don't bother me, but if I'm bothering them I don't want them to panic and step out in front of cars. So although I ran for 25 (painful) minutes, there were lots of short pauses for cows and vehicles. Not the 25 glorious minutes of uninterrupted running I'd hoped for.

Meh. There are good runs and bad ones. I'm not letting this crappy run deter me, though I really need a strategy for reducing shin pain. Annoyingly I'm not sure what brings it on during certain runs and not others. It's usually on the right though, so there's some sort of imbalance at the root I'm sure. And yes I DID do a proper dynamic warm up before running today, so that shouldn't have been the cause. More work to be done.

End of week 8

I've reached the end of week 8 and ran for 20 uninterrupted minutes today for the first time. Yay!

Next week is the second "easy" week, which just means I'm not expected to add any more distance to my training. During the last easy week I decided to experiment with cadence, because mine is pretty low (definitely more a jogging pace than running). I'll probably do that again because today I was experiencing some shin pain, which I'm pretty sure is due to my slow pace.

This article explains how increasing running cadence reduces the stress on bones and soft tissues, and ultimately the pain you experience while running. It also explains the danger of making any drastic changes, so a very gradual approach seems to be the way forward.

Shin splints

Photo by Justyn Warner on Unsplash

 The second day of training is meant to be the "easy" day. It has the shortest number of running intervals each week.  Yesterday I was at my local leisure centre so I decided to train indoors on the treadmill. I instantly remembered why I don't like doing this.  For a start it feels very different to the road. It's also harder to fire certain muscles because you're not pushing off from the ground in the same way, so for people like me trying activate glute muscles this isn't as effective a training method as hitting the tarmac. This article explains why.