Bring on the pain

So in my last post I told you about my gorgeous new shoes and now I am telling you about the pain of starting new shoes - shin splits. I went running outdoors last week (when it was 75 degrees) in my new shoes. Running on a new surface (the sidewalk) combined with breaking in new shoes brought on the pain.

Luckily, I have a friend at work who was a big basketball player in high school and college. She was no stranger to shin splits. Shin splits are caused by the muscle trying to pull away from your shin bone. So, the first thing my friend had me do was to tape up my leg for running. Here is what it looks like:





Basicall you tape from one side of your shin to the other but not across your shin. This helps keep the muscle next to the bone when you run. I found this very helpful over the last few days.

The other helpful thing for any sports injury is an ice bath. Now let me say this may be as painful as the workout itself. On Friday I took my first ice bath in about 10 years. I live in a condo so I share walls with my neighbors and they must have thought I was a) having some really rough sex or b) I was being killed because all I could scream/moan was "oh god! oh god! the pain! oh god!" After the first minute your legs go numb and you can actually read a book or whatever while you are in the tub. This helps to reduce the inflamation of your injury. It has helped me over the past few days but the initial shock of the ice bath does not go away.

Happy running!