Had a pretty poor sleep last night (cat knocking the alarm clock off the bedside cabinet at silly o’clock among other things), followed by a full-on day of meetings, hassle and detailed detail problems at work.
My eyes are sore, brain frazzled and my general ability to process information is, I’d say, slower than a snail in a slow race with a slug. So the massage I gave my leg upon getting home in an attempt to alleviate the ache in the shin and allow myself to consider what course of action to take couldn’t have been more timely.
Before the outing, I kneaded my calves and thighs to ensure they were firing on all cylinders so a good assessment of shin horrors could be made. It seemed to be a deciding run before I set out and the distance was to be set by how I felt.
2.48 miles was the answer.
The initial outing from the house was a joy of fresh legs apart from a bit of ache from the shin. A couple of stabs of discomfort made a couple of limped paces necessary, but then a form was found and stuck to. It felt good.
Pace kept slow, I got to 1 mile and reassessed things and all felt fresh enough. Then something felt odd and I stopped to feel my shin in a “wonder what my hand thinks” style (like a second opinion, I guess!) and it all felt ok. So I slowed right up (if something makes me stop and have a feel, it must be worrying enough to change run tactics, I feel.) but plodded on. And the slowing had a miracle effect.
Each pace, when thought about, brought a different feeling. Unfortunately, whenever I placed my outsole through a pace (an exagerrated roll of the foot), a not painful but decidedly unpleasant sensation occurred.
My shin appeared to move against itself.
As though something is detached inside. Very odd. The next pace (not wanting to repeat the sensation, to be fair!) brought a bit of ache, then it returned to normal. I was a bit worried, what with warnings of messed up summers ringing in my ears and hating to be wrong. Then a few paces later, when I kept wondering if the situation had changed, I’d have another go. Unsurprisingly, throughout the run, it didn’t alter at all. But neither did it hurt too much either. Well, on a relative scale to immense pain, anyway.
Did make me slow to 8.28 per mile, though, which isn’t good.
Now I’m left with an odd situation that I sit here with the freshest, least painful legs I’ve had for ages with no ache, no pain, no odd feelings, no movement in the area, nothing. As though a ghost malady is manifesting itself in my leg.
Thankfully tomorrow promises to be worse, work-wise, than today. Got a late-ish evening planned snagging the show-houses without disturbance by any of the trades to get the measure of how much work they need for completion and what details need changing for the remainder of the houses. That will mean a late run, probably short as well if I don’t have good sleep tonight and am as knackered as now, but crucially a couple of hours more to see how my leg feels in the mid-term.
I’ve not yet been this close to stopping the Janathon runs but, if I’ve any doubts about breakage (assuming the movement inside doesn’t mean it’s gone already), I’ll be cycling for the rest of January. I’d get the rowing machine ready but, as I’ve decided with running machine jogging…if it isn’t plottable on a Garmin or through Gmaps-pedometer or something, no distance has been covered so it doesn’t count!
Happy days.
1950.20 miles to go.
