Week 2 and a Personal Trainer

[Em_j22]

Week 1 complete! And the first run for Week 2. I noticed the difference with the longer runs, but it was manageable. My friend is doing a personal training course at college so she came to coach me as practise. Very helpful and knew what to tell me because she has been there, done that! Lots of pain in my shins today, she tells me it is shin splints. Hopefully, the pain will lessen by tomorrow's run.

Have any of you ran with a coach? Mine pushed me to do an extra 60secs - full speed sprinting no less! What a workout!

[DuncanS Graduate]

Firstly, congratulations on your move onto week two. Brilliant that you're not finding it too exhausting to move on.

Be careful of pushing too hard, though. If you have shin splints developing during a run, the very last thing you want to do is any more running, and certainly not 60 seconds of maximum speed sprinting. Shin splints aren't just sign of tired legs, they're a very painful stress injury caused by over-use of muscles and tendons which aren't used to it. If you're feeling weakness there you need to reduce your stress on them, not increase it, because you don't want to risk a more serious complication developing. Like any kind of over-use injury you need rest most of all to let it recover, then gentle, targeted exercise to build up the required strength. Search the forum (and the rest of the web) for lots and lots and lots of advice on this subject.

Stick with the programme - it's amazing what you can achieve. I was just about able to keep shin splints under control through it, as my shins got stronger at the same rate the programme increases the running distances.

Duncan

[Em_j22 in reply to DuncanS]

Thanks Duncan! I am being extremely careful with regards to injury, i'm not pushing myself too hard if I know my body can't handle it. I think my shins are OK, only had a slight tenderness today so I think that's just them strengthening in my day off running.

I will be doing some research into it as I would like to prevent it ever happening!

[Em_j22 in reply to DuncanS]

P.S my post did say lots of pain, but i think i was exaggerating! lol