Update

Just figured I would update anybody reading this on why I haven't been posting as often as I used to be! After a decent week of getting back in to the running game with my knee seemingly okay. Unfortunately I became too preoccupied to make sure my knee was okay that I failed to pay enough attention to a shin pain that was becoming increasingly problematic. So, this past Sunday I ended up stopping a run early - not because of my knee, but because of my shin...sigh. I took 3 days off iced, took advil and did exercises that supposedly help shin splint treatment. I assumed Once I hadn't felt anything for two days I was good to go. After two minutes in to my run I realized I was wrong and had to stop and walk back. So I'm taking MORE time off. At least my knee and groin problem should be completely gone once this shin thing is figured out.

If anyone would like to voice their opinions on what it may be here are the symptoms:

- It's a throbbing pain
- It's located right in between my knee and ankle, I feel it on the medial side of my leg. It seems to be generally anterior, but is posterior to my shin.
- I can more or less pinpoint where the pain is when I feel it.
- The pain slowly goes away after about 10-12 hrs after I run (although I only figured this out a few times before I stopped running - it kept me awake, so I figured that wasn't a good thing).
- Impact seems to be the main cause.

A few more notes:
I don't even know if it is muscular, skeletal or a tendon problem. I have tried to narrow it down, but haven't really been able to. I can't tell if icing helps. I also tried some exercises with my toes to see if it was related to the... extensor digitorum family. I didn't notice anything there....

Introduction: Week 1 (Febuary 21st - Febuary 27th)

Sunday: 6 miles in 45:00 (7:30/mi)

Monday: 8 miles in 58:00 (7:15/mi)

Tuesday: AM - 4.5 miles in 34:00 (7:33/mi)  PM - 4.2 miles in 31:00 (7:23/mi)

Wednesday: 9 miles in 65:00 (7:13/mi)

Thursday: 8 miles in 57:00 (7:08)

Friday: AM - 4.3 miles in 32:00 (7:27/mi) PM - 8.4 miles in 60:00 (7:09/mi)

Saturday: 3.8 miles in 30:00 (7:54/mi)

Didn't note any of the runs because they were all sort of the same, just easy...The only important thing to mention is that my knee and shin have been sore on and off. That's why I chose not to do a main run on Saturday, just to make sure I give the knee some time to recover after a full week of running.

56.2 miles
6:52 hrs
2 doubles
0 off

Starting anew

The past two weeks aren't worth posting as they consisted of 9.3 miles of running for the first week with 540 min minutes of cross training, and then a total of 7.5 miles the following week with no cross training. I have decided that attempting to run Shamrock would be a poor decision since I would be nowhere near as prepared for it as I should be. This isn't thinking in terms of performance, more so in terms of the injury risk accompanied with jumping right back in to it after so much time off. I have reviewed the training program I laid out for Shamrock and determined it was much too rushed. After cross country I was quite anxious to start up training for a half marathon, and was very hasty in my decision of which Half to run. I chose Shamrock which was a little more than 15 weeks away, which, when I look back at it, was a very poor choice. This new program I am drafting is comprised of ~3-5 weeks of introductory running to safely build back in to a solid volume of training. Then I will hold that volume for a minimum of 3 months , after that I will begin new phases aimed towards race preparation. This may be a confusing post as I'm just writing out what comes to my mind. In a little while, once I have drafted the program I will post it here.