Physical Therapy

Shin splints.

The terrible, painful feeling that radiates up your posterior or anterior shin. It causes pain while running downhills, running in general, walking up stairs, walking down stairs, walking, sitting, sleeping... It pretty much just causes pain. It's been a year since I started running and I've had shin splints ever since. They go away when I take two weeks off, but then come back again.

So, recently my legs have been very mad at me and I began to fear stress fractures. My brother and I went to see a sports medicine doctor and he officially diagnosed both of us with bilateral posterior shin splints and prescribed physical therapy.

So, we scheduled some PT for today, and I went out on my run this morning as usual. We did some hill repeats and about 30 minutes of running not counting the hills. For the workout we sprinted up a big hill 6 times at 1 minute, proceeding to jog down and sprint back up after each one, and then 8 times at 30 seconds. It was a pretty good workout. Afterward, my legs were dead. I got home, took a shower, ate some lunch and headed out.

When we got to Physical Therapy it turns out they scheduled us for yesterday and told us today, but they managed to squeeze us in. The guy who was working on me seemed to know what he was doing very well and told me what was causing the problems and gave me some exercises to do to fix it. He still hasn't worked everything out, but I have hope for the future now. I'm supposed to go to PT three times a week and not run this Saturday. Not run... on the long run day??? How will I survive?!?

Well, I want to be faster and less injured, so I guess I won't be running Saturday. Oh well. My mother pointed something out that's pretty cool though, she said if I'm doing this well while being injured just wait until I'm all fixed up, I'll be much faster. To run without my shins hurting? Is it possible? I certainly hope so!

Wish me luck with my legs and the oncoming weekend without my beloved running.

Bye!
~Scarrlet