Another running injury

One of my biggest flaws is that I am stubborn the next biggest flaw of mine would be that I think I can do anything. Some would say that the second one is not really considered a flaw, but when combined with the first one it is a huge flaw.


I am a fairly new runner, meaning that I just started running about 2 years ago. In that time I have had 2 injuries the first being shin splints, the second was my knee. Both of these injuries were due to pushing too hard to fast. You see in both cases I was training for a race and wanted to do my best, and my best would be to run faster. So I pushed myself to do more speed work and a LOT more hill training. The end result was injuries. I got through the first race, but did not perform at my best, the second race I never got to do I hurt my knee too close to the race and could not recover in time to run it.

So having this experience with running and injuries you would think I would learn my lesson right? WRONG! I did it again, I have another race coming up and I want to do my best so there I go with the speed work again, this time I did cut out the hill training since my race will be in Florida on a flat course. Last week I started to notice my shins were hurting again, not to bad just tender. I decided that they would be fine and ignored them. Then the morning after my snow run this week I had pain when I got out of bed. This is a sure sign that my shins were not getting better and I should do something. Well this is where my flaws come in to play. I decided again to not do anything and continue with my training, I did however start to stretch more (a little too late for this decision I think). Well two days and 2 runs later and I had to stop in the middle of my run because the pain was too bad. So here I am with shin splints again.

For those of you who are following my training on daily mile, you may be thinking but you are not running that much. This would be a correct observation, the difference this time is P90X. There are a few workouts in P90X that I believe has helped the shin splints along quite well (Plyo). The first time I did P90X I had no issues, but I was not training for a half marathon at that time also. So here I am working out 2 or 3 times a day pushing myself in both the P90X and the running and I am injured again. STUBORN, STUBORN, STUBORN. I think if I had eased back in to my mileage and the P90X instead of deciding on Jan 1 that I was going to do both and jumped right in I would not be having issues. But once again I thought I could do it all, hell I have even decided to start the 100 push up challenge too. Can someone please knock some since into me!

So here is the new plan, I am going to take a few days off from running but continue the P90X. Then go back to only running every other day, and ONLY doing speed work one time a week instead of like every run. I will also be icing everyday and taking lots of vitamin I (Ibuprofen for those of you who did not know what vitamin I was). Then I will start the running again and hope the shin splints at the very least don’t get worse. I am also going to really start thinking about minimalist running so that maybe I no longer have to deal with these issues and can push as hard as I want to. I think a pair of Vibram FiveFingers are in my near future.