Hey y’all! I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while: I
am a runner. Well, at least I think I am. It could just be a fantasy I’ve
tricked myself into believing is real. I’ll let you be the judge.
This past spring, I started running one mile pretty much
every day, except maybe one or two days during the week that I took a rest day.
It got to the point where I pretty much wanted to run all the time. And so the
day of my Senior Prom, I ended up running two miles for the first time (it was
also the first time I had used my Nike+ Running app).
I would say things were going great at this point. I was
running two miles instead of one every day, and I felt more alive than I had in
a while. But all too soon everything was taken from me (or so it felt like).
While on one of my two-mile runs, I began to feel a slight
pain in my shins. At the time, I didn’t really know what shin splints were, and
I certainly didn’t know what they
felt like. I did what any ignorant person would do and ignored it thinking that
it would just disappear on its own. However, that didn’t happen. My shins only
began to hurt worse until I quit running altogether because of the pain.
It wasn’t until July that I truly started running again.
Only this time, I had read Galloway’s
Book on Running, and I changed my strategy from running every day to
running two days and then taking a rest day. After about a week my shin splints
came back as they had their own plan in mind. I couldn’t have been more devastated;
all I wanted to do was run. Was that too much too ask?
Apparently so.
My dad ended up taking me to a running shoe store to have me
fitted with a proper pair of shoes. We ended up leaving the store with a new
pair of running shoes and this thing called “the Stick,” which is used to help
massage out sore muscles and shin splints. I whip out my Stick every time I
feel the slight pang of my shin splints returning. I usually massage my shins
for about twenty minutes (which, for the record, feels like repeatedly hitting
a bruise) before icing them.
That usually does the trick!
Well, that’s my two cents! I sincerely hope that if you are
struggling with shin splints, that you will find this to be quite helpful. If
you have any advice about running that you’d like to share with me please leave
a comment below!
Savannah
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