I was going to post this in my training journal, but...I think it's worth getting input from the larger group.
I did only my Tuesday run last week, no Thursday run, no Saturday long run (for context, my longest long run has been 3 miles), didn't even do my morning walks on the off days. That was because I had very noticeable swelling in both legs, the left more than the right, and lingering shin pain for several days in the left. I've had some swelling towards each evening that I'd been chalking up to water retention since it's summer and I've been eating poorly (way too much fast food, which means way too much salt on top of everything else that's bad for me in it), but after things suddenly coming to a head last week I'm wondering if I've been beating my legs up more than I thought I was. There's also the issue, as I mentioned in my journal, that my new running shoes slip a little in the heel no matter how I lace them and I think it contributed to the problem. Of course, the big contributor was the fact that I noticed my shin hurting more than usual about halfway through the run (I've had mild pain after each run that goes away within a few hours...another clue that I was doing worse things to myself than I thought?) and...kept going through the pain. Gee, what's that thing we don't do, again?
Because this is still so new to me, I get a little scared when I see myself just not running for most of a week, especially since I didn't do any of my weekend routine to prepare to start up again this week. I have no plan for this week, running laundry's not done, none of that. Having started things and then quit when it got too hard, I remember having times where I would intend to pick something back up again after a break and just never did--so while I don't want to throw myself back into behaviors that could cause an injury, I'm being very conscious of the need to keep thinking about running and making real, solid plans for what I'm going to do next. Last week was more hectic than I'd expected, so it wasn't until last night that I got back to doing a little reading and thinking about what this looks like.
Thoughts I'm having...I'm on the Galloway method, and it seems he's recommending (at this stage at least) two "maintenance" runs on weekdays and one long, slow run on the weekend with a full rest day before the long run. What I've been doing are two half-hour runs on weekdays during which I push myself about as hard as I can sustain for that half hour, and I do about 70 minutes of walking the day before my long run mostly out of scheduling convenience (I walk to work on my walking days, and Saturday's a better day for me to run than Sunday). I'm currently running 10 seconds, walking 50, and my pace rarely gets under 15:00 per mile--more often I'm around 15:30. This is after I deliberately slowed myself down because I could tell I was hurting my shins and fading at the ends of runs when I ran 15/45 and pushed for a faster pace. Now I'm wondering if I need to slow down even more, and that's disheartening. I think the 10/50 ratio is alright, but...and this is seriously frustrating...I'm wondering if I should be aiming for something more like 16:00. I'm about 60-70 pounds heavier than I'd ultimately like to be, which is less a concern in terms of "burn fat now!" (I'm viewing weight loss as a secondary benefit of running, if it happens at all) and more a concern in terms of "I'm putting stress on my joints." So I recognize that 16:00 at 10/50 might be the best I can do right now without hurting myself. It's frustrating, though.
In the long term, my goals include running a half marathon next June and the WDW Marathon in January 2020. So far I've gone into this with the assumption that my focus throughout my training needs to be on distance and that I'll naturally be able to increase my intervals as I build up endurance. I can't explain exactly how the thought got in my head, but now I keep coming back to the thought that maybe I should focus on increasing my ability to run longer intervals on shorter runs before I build much further past 3 miles. I just imagine myself slogging through ten miles at my current ratio and pace and it doesn't sound like where I'll want to be. I'm thinking about things like...if I focus on short distance runs (maybe up to 10K) now through January, I'll still have six months to train to run the HM distance, and then another six months to train to run marathon distance. And maybe being able to run more and walk less by the time I start adding longer runs will make things easier at that point. But then I don't know if teaching myself to run higher ratios on shorter runs will be better or worse for preventing injury than focusing only on distance.
And so, back to the injury question...I think there are a couple things I need to examine. First, I need to get serious about stretching, which I haven't really been doing (if only because every time I look up how and what to stretch I get inundated with what seems like a billion different stretches I'll never remember to do after every run). Second, I suspect strength training might benefit me--that's strength training in terms of building up my core and any other muscle groups that might help me function better as a runner. Third, I need to deal with the shoe situation. Any recommendations for getting the heel to stop slipping? I was informed in my journal thread that some running stores will exchange shoes even if they've been run in a bit, but the store from which I bought them is a three hour drive away. If I need to replace the shoes, I'm probably more inclined to go to the other one that's only a 90 minute drive and just eat the cost of the additional pair. Fourth, I do need to consider what my priorities are as I build my training plan going forward and as I decide whether to slow down on those weekday runs and make them truly "easy" instead of the "moderate" I suspect they currently are. And, too, whether I need to take Fridays off from walking to give my legs a full rest before the long run instead of taking that rest the day after.
For now I'm committing to at least walking throughout this week, whether or not I get any runs in before the weekend. So whether or not I think of anything else, I need to post this and go--it's past time for me to set out to walk to work.
Edit: Yeah, didn't get the walk in, waited too long to start and just drove to work. So that's starting the week out less than ideally.
Well, W&D does, but I did it the last year of night races, so the course doesn't exist anymore and on top of that we only ran half of it because of the lightning delay. But I guess I'll answer even though it's not relevant anymore.
