Not so good, actually.

Pitiful monthly total: 19.8 miles. Even for me, that's way below normal. At a minimum, I should be doing twice that. Had I not substituted several runs w/ workouts at the gym, perhaps my mileage would have been closer to 30. But it should be there anyway, including gym workouts.

Today, the shin splints hit hard. I did a little warmup around the block, stretched well, then got going on the run. I thought it was going well until the shin splints came on. Jeesus. It hurt even to walk. It means I need more stretching, more often. This is pitiful.

I have nobody and nothing to blame but myself. I've certainly had the time this month to make a meal of it, instead of a snack, but I shy from the cold and shirk my conscience. As I search for something to pin my lack of progress on, I begin to wonder if the last round of IVs - four weeks' worth of antibiotics - haven't made my tendons rather more brittle and less stretchy. It's a known problem, after all. But then I think I'm just using that as a scapegoat - no one can sit around all of January and do nothing more than 3 miles at a time and not detrain, not get tight, not have some kind of shin splints or IT band problems.

Speaking of which, I decided to double up my nebulizer meds so I did them before I ran and am doing them again now. I just spent ten minutes stretching while doing Pulmozyme and am now doing Aztreonam while I type. And now that that's done, I'm going to hit the foam roller for a few, then probably pop out to the grocery before showering.

Hope to work out tomorrow, but it looks like I'll be rushing to finish my syllabus before teaching begins tomorrow night. Yeah, it's true - I STILL haven't solidified this semester's syllabus; mostly because it isn't just a matter of changing dates, but updating the course content to match the new software, ditch some old exercises, invent new ones, etc. Some of that I can put off for later, but some of it has to be done now so it can be in the syllabus for tomorrow.