Shin splint advise!!!

You just have to listen to your body. I'm bad about it too. I figure running through the pain makes you stronger! Right? lol. Unfortunately, no it doesn't, and I've had to pay for that stubbornness of mine with 4-6 weeks off for various over-use injuries.

You have to stop for probably a couple of weeks at least and then see where you're at by running. If the pain is still there add a couple of more weeks. I'd say any other exercise you can do where you don't experience the pain is fine.

I know it sucks when you're trying to train, but there's no way around it. In the future you need to limit yourself to increasing mileage no more than 10%/week to avoid over-use injuries.

Good luck

katiebarton719 wrote: »

Personal trainer advise - private plan.

2 X per week:
2 min walk 3 min sprint X 6

3 X per week:
5 min walk 25 min run

2 days - rest days - I usually do a 10 min easy walk.

I do around 25km per week.

March 2017

OK, so you've got a good amount of time util the race, so can afford to take 3-4 weeks off running to let the injury heal.

Your mileage is a bit low for entering a half marathon plan, and that plan looks unusual to me. Are you confident that the trainer has running coaching knowledge? I'd also observe that you could seek advice from them on the shin splints.

Shin splints have a number of different potential causes; lower leg muscle imbalance, doing too much, too soon, inappropriate, badly fitting or worn out shoes, gait imbalance. What you need to do, to avoid recurrence, is treat the cause, rather than the symptom. If you don't deal with that then the pain will come back.

Assuming that you've got reasonably fresh, and appropriate running shoes, then I'll talk about the strength and training load aspects. It strikes me that the training load aspect is your most likely culprit.

Shin splints are microfractures and muscle tears in the shin bone, and between the shin bone and the shin muscle. This could be a result of the shin muscle and calf muscle not being matched from a strength perspective. You can address this by either doing strength training, bodyweight is fine, or something like cycling while slipped into pedals, and concentrating on pedalling in circles. That should help strengthen the shin muscle so that it's not fighting the calf. In terms of strength training options; calf raises on a raised edge and squats.

With respect to training load, as upthread I'd generally avoid an increase of more than 10% per week in either distance OR pace, and the weekly long run should be no more than 25% of total weekly mileage. With that in mind I would be expecting one of your longer sessions to be extending out in length as you must barely be doing 5K in those at the moment?

It strikes me that your two interval sessions are the likely cause of your problems. As you speed up it's easy to forget about running form and allow yourself to run badly. With a 2 minute warm up you're not relaxed enough for faster running, and as your aerobic base appears to be lower you're not gaining much from them.

It's a couple of years since I did a dedicated HM plan, I now fit HMs in to marathon training, but what I'd be expecting to see from a novice plan would be along the lines of:

• Three steady paced runs midweek, each starting at 5-6km and then building to 10km by the end of the plan going into the taper
• one long run, probably starting at 8k and building to 18k about 2 weeks before the race
• one recovery run the day after the long, probably about 5k throughout and slower paced

There are plenty of free HM plans out there. You shouldn't need to pay someone to essentially google it for you. As a novice half marathoner, on 25k pw, stick to steady paced runs to build your aerobic capacity. Your fast intervals aren't doing anything for you, and are potentially what's causing your problems.

Although you have some excellent advice above regarding changes to your plan which I'm sure will work, here's some more things people said to me when I was struggling with shin splints - maybe they helped maybe they didn't, who knows, but I tried everything I could!
The good news is that most of us have suffered at one time or another but come out the other side just fine, I'm sure you will too. Just be patient!
- Try to run on softer terrain - grass, running track, treadmill, trail etc ... Just not hard concrete/pavements.
- Avoid steep hills - both up and down, until you're more recovered
- Try calf guards/compression sleeves/socks - some ppl find they help, I liked the 'comforting' feeling they gave me, like supporting everything from the outside.
- Ice your shins after any running that you do choose to continue doing
- Use a cross-trainer in place of one of your runs (no impact) if it's less painful than running
- Maintain cardio fitness (and sanity!) by doing any other sports which aren't painful - cycling & swimming?
- Do some core/strength training in the meantime to help muscle strength for when you get back to running.