So I cried today...

So I cried today. After my 3 mile run, I limped to my truck, climbed in the back and just cried. Don't get me wrong, it didn't hurt THAT bad, those were not "I'm in pain tears". I think I was just so... let down. It's hard when you feel like you're doing everything right and things don't go the way they should. I felt like my body was trying to tell me that, "yeah Lauren, it's great that you started taking care of me the past few months, but that really doesn't make up for the past 6 years that you treated me like crap... give me time"

I don't have time. Well, it's not that I don't have time but I don't feel like I should NEED any more time. Cardiovascularly I can hold a comfortable 9:20 mile average, but I ran a 10:00 mile average today because my legs started hurting. It's incredibly frustrating, I barely felt like I got a workout. And I wouldn't even mind running through the pain, if I knew that it was not going to make it worse. But the fact that every time I hit the ground and felt my bones jarring I felt like I was just screwing myself.

I'm upset because I should have known better. This is exactly what happened last year. Same jump too, from 3 miles to 4 mile runs and I busted my shins. Last year I kept running on them and eventually REALLY busted my shins. This year I WANT to keep running on them but, I just don't know what to do. It would be simply stupid to do the exact same thing and expect different results, and yet that is what I'm doing.

It's about an hour and half post-run now and I've iced and advil'ed and I feel much better. Shins don't hurt to walk anymore at least so that is good. Immediately after my run I was able to locate a quarter sized spot on my shin that hurt more than the rest of my shin, and I can no longer locate that so I feel like that is a good sign. I don't know what to do.

And just more details on the pain in case I forget later: the pain was just barely there in the beginning but went away after running about 5 minutes and returned around mile 2 and got progressively worse throughout the rest of the run. On a scale of 1-10 (1=no pain, 10=excruciating) it never got past a 4 on the ACTUAL running part. As soon as I stopped running though and started walking to my car the pain shot up to about a 6-7. I was actually limping :(. I don't know if it's technically shin splints or what but it is my shins.

Update on ankle pain: apparently I did what I had to do for that because voila! no ankle pain!

Hmmm maybe the shins can be fixed with ice and advil too??? **crosses fingers**