Catching Up

Lets play catch up with bullet points!

• Thanks everyone for your comments on my last post about switching marathons. I have decided to go ahead and run the Lake Lowell Half Marathon on May 5th and run the Famous Idaho Potato Marathon on May 19th. I think it was just a better choice for me. This also means I get to meet and run with these two ladies (here & here) at the Lake Lowell Half :) This also pushed marathon training back 2 weeks.

• My strength training has been going awesome. I've been doing about 2-3 strength training workouts a week. I am still using Jamie Eason's Live Fit Trainer. I don't follow every workout to a T but I have seen lot of strength improvement. Arms, back & chest are the area I've been working on most. I want to look good in those tank tops this summer! This past Saturday I did some kettle bell swings while Gene did some heavy rope wave exercise. We take turns usually doing 30 seconds. I always start sucking towards the end and can barely get the wave to go to the end of the rope.  Then we did some tire flips. Man that thing was heavy! I did a few of them before we called it a day.

• My mileage has been low these past two weeks. Part of it is cause I've been a little lazy in the running department (not the best thing since marathon training starts soon). I haven't had the motivation to get outside so my runs have mostly been on the treadmill. The other part is cause I've been experiencing some lower leg pain on my left leg. On Monday I did a 5 mile hill workout on the treadmill. I started at .5 incline for a mile warm up then did quarter mile repeats where I increased the incline from 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5,  then back down to 5, 4.5, 4 with a flat cool down. It made the 5 miles go by pretty quick. After the workout I felt a little bit of soreness on my lower left leg. I've felt this off and now for a few runs. But yesterday, the day after the hill workout, I could actually feel more pain than the day before. And it hurt more when I went up and down stairs. This obviously freaked me out and I was thinking the worst so I turned to the internet for answers, cause you know that's the easiest way to self diagnose yourself. I found that pain I was experiencing was just like posterior shin splints. I've never had shin splints so this wasn't the first thing that popped into my head. In fact I always thought shin splints were only on the front of the leg (Anterior Shin Splints). I found this picture that shows exactly where my pain is (Posterior Shin).

I tried some of the stretches that work the calf muscles that are tight (Gastrocnemius and Soleus) and I definitely feel the tightness. I also did some icing and wore my compression socks yesterday, which I read the compression can help. I did do some slow running today after my strength training. I did a walk warm up with some slow running then a walk cool down for a total of 1.2 miles. I could feel the pain, or more like soreness, at the beginning of the run and I could feel myself wanting to change my stride to compensate for soreness. Towards the middle of the run it started to fade and my stride was feeling more natural. I did some stretching after the run. I wore my compression socks again today and it actually doesn't feel as sore as yesterday. I can feel the tightness going up and down the stairs but not the way it felt yesterday.

 I read that hill training and speed training can cause it as well as outworn shoes. I think the hill workout I did caused the pain to become more apparent instead of just a light soreness I had been feeling the past few weeks. And also wearing my shoes longer than I should have and that may be were why I was feeling the soreness off and on for the past few weeks. I did get 2 new pairs of shoes recently and had a new pair on when I did the hill workout.

 For now I will wear my compression socks, ice, stretch and take it easy on the running this week and see how it goes :/ I have some K-tape at home and I also have access to it at work that I was thinking about trying to see if it helped any.

• On Monday I also registered for the Race to Robie Creek Half Marathon. This race sold out in 9 min and 49 seconds. What makes this race so special you ask? Well it's dubbed the "toughest race in the Northwest" and apparently there are 2100 people who are crazy enough to want to run it and I was one of them. I still am not sure what I got myself into. But this is one of the biggest races in Idaho and I have to try it at least once. You can read the course description HERE.  It starts at Fort Boise (elevation 2725′), 8.5 miles up Rocky Canyon and over Aldape Summit (elevation 4797′), to a 13.1 mile finish at Robie Creek campground (elevation 3065′). Translation: You run up hill for 8.5 miles, followed by a steep downhill till mile 12 where it finally flattens out. Should be fun right? 

I was pretty surprised I got in. I had been going back and forth on if I wanted to run it or not. When it was registration time at 12pm on Monday I logged in at about 12:05 and filled out all my info then hit submit and waited till my transaction processed 3 minutes later and I got my confirmation that it went thru fine. When I logged back onto facebook I read the race had already sold out so I just barely made. I was surprised by the amount of people that were pissed off they didn't get in and were complaining about the registration process. They use Active which is what a lot races use but if you have that many people wanting to register for a race at the same time there is bound to be problems and servers crashing. Guess it pays to have fast internet :)  They do have a second chance lottery drawing and from what I've been reading there's always people selling their bibs as it gets closer to the race. They have a theme every year and this year it's Samurai Sailtoad... I have a few costume ideas floating around in my head :)

Have you ever had shin splints?

Any recommendations on what I should do to improve?