Hi - i have just finished week one (took me nearly two weeks!) and i am OK, apart from the fact that the front of my shins are quite sore - is this just muscles? Hurts to press! I normally do a lot of walking and haven't had this before. I have a good pair of trainers too!
Thanks!
Sophie
Hi Sophie & well done on getting off your couch...
... I used to suffer quite a lot during the first week and then I realized that I was not stretching my muscles for long enough or in the right way after each of the sessions.
For shins I find that if I kneel on the floor (indoors) with your toes out behind you then hold one knee and pull it up off the floor very very slightly, but enough so you can feel a stretch - hold it for upto 10 seconds if you can - then repeat on the other leg - and do them both again 2 more times....
You also need to stretch our your calf muscles too - face a wall & put your hands against it - then walk your feet out away from the wall & keeping legs stretched & your heels on the floor until you feel the calfs stretch - then bend one knee and keep the other locked with that heel on the floor to stretch for 10 seconds - repeat with the other leg - and do them both again 2 more times.
the biggest tip is to think of it as a stretching out - so no take it slow and try to keep to the 10 seconds..
Good luck
Another good exercise for strengthening the muscles in your shins is to sit down in a chair with your feet on the floor and your knees at 90 degrees. Now tap your toes up and down, i do left then right but I think you can do them at the same time or left only and then repeat on the right. At first it seems easy but the aim is to get to a point which takes about a minute or so that the front of your shins start to tire and it become harder and harder to tap those toes. Keep going (it should start to burn) then hold your toes up for a slow count of 10. This should be repeated 3 times a day.
Well worth doing some reading round about running form (eg google 'pose running' and 'chi running' for some ideas) - lots of aches can be avoided by just changing how you land on your feet and how you push off. Plus running slowly until your legs have adapted - going at the speed that we expect is often too much for muscles that haven't run for years! I haven't had any real problems, but I have only rarely done any stretching, and have run up to 10k. Slowly.
I'm not saying that stretching is bad, just that maybe other things can help too.
Thanks everyone! I really want to carry on now i have got over the initial embarrasment of leaving the house!
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