I am trying not to panic

Is it ironic that I can have such painful runs with no day-after sorenss, yet the day after my one pain-free run, my legs are incredibly sore, like I'd done some kind of half-marathon race? Weird.

I went to the doctor today to see about these shin splints. I described the pain and the areas it happens: front, back, outer tibia. It didn't take him long: he pressed three points in rapid succession on the INSIDE of my tibia and on the second one, it was as if he'd pressed a button visible only to him, marked PAIN. "You're going to get some therapy," he said. "You've got tibial stress syndrome," by which he means shin splints, "and you're courting a stress fracture." Oh, great. Shin splints I knew, but I didn't know I could be breaking my own legs. OK, therapy it is then. I go in Thursday for my eval exam by the sports therapist.

He was not thrilled with the state of my orthotics. See, when leather gets wet, as these have gotten soaked twice, it tends to reshape itself - not helpful when they're supposed to be holding they're own shape and correcting my feet. So the doc glued some more foam onto the bottoms temporarily to correct my foot alignment. The orthotics will need attention from their maker, Dr. McNerny.

So I go look up shin splints and find this helpful page. Unfortunately, it makes me very nearly want to panic, as between the information there and the certain knowledge that the therapist will back it up - I should be reducing my mileage for awhile.

BUT I CAN'T! I've got a marathon to train for! I've been holding off on mileage 'til now (sometimes not my own choice, I admit) and need to get on the wagon dammit!

Even more frustrating, I immediately get an email from NYRR announcing the beginning of the online training program. Excited like a little boy, I signed up, having been assured by Beast that their program is a pretty good one, well worth the nominal fee.

And, indeed, the NYRR program does seem good. After some struggling with the browser, and learning that I'll need to do this through Firefox for the time being, I punched in my previous marathon time, my ability level, my goals....and it spit out a complete training schedule - that has me quite puzzled.

First, it starts with such an easy few weeks I nearly laughed. Even injured I should be doing more mileage than that. The long runs don't get back up to 8 miles for like two months! I'll have to remedy that; I CANNOT lose the conditioning I've got so far. Another oddity is that given the goal time - currently set at 4:15 for the marathon, which I feel is overreaching - the long runs and tempo runs are ridiculously slow paced, even up to a 12:20 per mile pace. Of course, the speedwork I asked for gets up to 6 repeats of 7-minute miles, so maybe I don't know as much as I thought I did. The bright and shining benefit of this customizable program is that it will remind/force me to expand my training options with some crosstraining days and more focused kinds of speedwork. I'm going to keep working the input numbers until I get a schedule that I'm comfortable with, including the first couple weeks having more than nine measly miles.

Of course... maybe I should take the computer's suggestions as a good idea, considering I'll be dealing with recovering from shin splints for the next six to eight weeks. I just wish there were a way to treat the shin splints, fix the orthotics, and continue to train UP all at the same time.

OH, one last thing. Congrats to Lora for completing her first triathlon!

[edit] OK, I think I've come across a decent training schedule by bluffing the numbers just a hair higher - numbers I would've been running in a week or two anyway. My training begins tomorrow with 3 miles. The first week is easy stuf. The schedule soon builds to running or cross-training six days a week, something I'm nervous about, but it is plain from other blogs that the truly dedicated are truly rewarded. The long runs build up very nearly on the schedule I'd originally laid out for Nashville, culminating with a 21 mile long run three weeks before the marathon. It all looks like a challenging, yet realistic, schedule.