Running Chick

Somebody stop me, I do dumb things.

I’ve been feeling a little discomfort in my shins lately, nothing major and completely kept under control by icing & Advil, but it’s there. The other day I got to thinking that maybe I should try my custom orthotics on a run just to see how my legs feel. So, I did.  Now, this wasn’t necessarily a dumb idea per se, but completely ignoring that these custom orthotics gave me such bad knee pain that they knocked me out of consistent running for almost a year, was stupid.

The first mile of my four mile run was kind of promising. No shin pain, no other issues. The next quarter mile, my shins started to ache and by a half mile they were pissed off. I stopped, stretched for a bit and took off again, but I didn’t get too far and had to stop again. I thought about walking back to my house, but decided to take out the insoles and see how that went. The pain went away by probably 50%, and I considered finishing my full run, but for once, I listened to what my body was telling me and ended with three.

I’ve been icing both shins for 20-30 minutes every 1-1/2 to 2 hours and I think I’d downgrade them from pissed off to aggravated. Fingers crossed that they’re okay for my long run on Saturday.

Anyhoo, I decided that I need to add some hill training to my regime so on Tuesday, I sent out to do four miles of hills. I wasn’t interested in doing sprint repeats, I wanted some mid-length upward grinds with some downhill recovery and I found my perfect loop on Jacker Avenue.

The loop (square, more like) is about .8 of a mile long, the first .4 mile (starting at the corner of Jacker & Military) is uphill, the next .2 is flat and the last .2 is downhill.  I did about a mile warm-up and then did the Jacker –> Dodge –> Frue –> Military Road loop three times. It’s a pretty steady half-mile climb from Jacker to Frue and I struggled and stopped once for a few seconds on the first loop and once again on the second loop.

I forgot to press the lap button on my Garmin on each loop, but thanks to my handy dandy SportTracks program, I was able to estimate that I did the first loop in 10:19, the second loop in 10:16 and the last loop in 10:08. I would love to take all the credit for the time on that last loop, but there was some extra downhill in there as I made my way back to my house. I imagine the actual time was slower than the second loop because I could feel myself running out of steam toward the end.

Here’s the elevation profile. It looks ickier than it actually was, but I felt like I got in a really good workout.

I haven’t decided if I want to add hill training to my weekly schedule yet, though. Now that I’m getting into bigger mileage weeks, I’m a little bit scared of overloading my legs and getting injured.