Shin Splints and other Miscellaney

It’s the weekend! This has felt like a really, really long work week and I am glad to see the end of it in about 2 ½ hours!

Thank you for all the comments/suggestions about shin splints.  I ran on Wednesday night and although my shins were still aching a little, I managed to do a trail run with no issues until the very end – about 5k including walking at the start/end.  I had to walk up the last third of a steep hill about half way into the run and one walk break I extended to two minutes. When I could feel my shins just starting to burn, I slowed down until the burning backed off and then picked it up again. This worked until the very end when we running on concrete and I could feel the impact much more and I ended up walking in the last 5 minutes or so.  This was huge improvement over Sunday and Monday of this week.  I've also been doing the toe/heel raises every day in the morning and evening and increasing the reps every other day.

We have another run tonight and I am not sure of the route, but I’m going to try the same tactic.

I’m optimistic that I just need to listen to my body better and go by it’s cues. I am not a fast runner, I have a short stride and my legs don’t move very quickly – I would like to be faster so I do try and go faster at the beginning when I have the most energy – I think this may be contributing to the shin splints as well as not warming up enough before starting to jog. So that’s my plan for now – I’ll keep you posted. Once I get another week or two of no shin splints I’m going to try doing interval running – with short sprints just before the walk break. I’d like to try it now – because once I get an idea – I want to JUST DO IT, but I also don’t want to be setback completely.

In other news, I back to using  My Fitness Pal along with my FitBit. I did mention a few weeks ago that I needed to let go of tracking just to ease some stress and I did well – no change in weight or eating habits but I feel better when I know how much I’m eating and it helps me monitor my blood sugar better. For the past two years I eat about 80% clean and eat very, very little processed carbs – probably 3-5 servings a week of bread/pasta/rice and never more than one serving at one time.  For example, a serving of pasta is half a cup, not a huge plate – a serving of bread is one slice, about 2-3 oz and rice is also half a cup. I have cut out processed sugar almost completely, but I will occasionally (as in once every week or so) have a ½ cup of real ice cream or chocolate or a few bites of dessert.   All the other carbs I eat are from the low glycemic  fruits and vegetables. I occasionally will have white potatoes. Sometimes I think since I am so close to not eating processed carbs,  I could cut them out completely and I have done that before, for weeks at a time but there are a lot of things I don’t and can’t eat for various reasons and sometimes it requires more work/juggling/thinking about than I have energy or time for. For a few months I could see my processed foods were creeping back up; especially bread but I'm back to focusing now not just on how much but what.   I’m hoping that I can get back into weight loss mode now that I am managing some of the stress better.

I had to cancel my Weights for Women class because the time of the class won’t work with my commute, it was going to be impossible to make the start time. I am not sure what I will do to replace Yoga over the summer yet – but I’ll come up with something.  There is a CrossFit gym that my friend Guenther goes to that has a summer special, I just need to see if the classes work with my schedule.