Week two of training is officially in the books!

I’ve been having some trouble this week with pain in my legs. Even on my other run days, my right leg starts to feel like I have shin splints. I can tell that my form is suffering when I start to feel it. My foot thumps into the ground, which I’m pretty sure isn’t helping the painful situation. Needless to say, I have been running pretty slow this week. At this point, I’m disappointed with how training has begun but I can find some positives in this as well; at least it isn’t the week before the race. I’m trying to figure out how to help myself. Stretching more before, during, and after a run hasn’t proven to be beneficial. The only other thing that I can think of is my shoes. I’ve run into this problem before where the new shoes I pick out feel good for the first couple of runs and then I find that they aren’t the right fit for my feet. I may give these shoes another week before I make the decision about whether or not I need to try out a new pair.

Anyway, back to today’s run. Seeing as how I was struggling with some pain, I had a pretty rough run. I ran from my house to the library down the street. There was a lot of walking involved. My right calf just felt tight and my ankle was bothering me. The weather was great though, around 55 degrees. Great day to be out. I got to the library which is about 2 miles from my house. I decided to walk a little bit to try to loosen up my leg a little bit before I started to run it out again. On the way back to my house, I was finally feeling in the groove and the pain was subsiding a little bit when a big reddish dog came charging off the front step of it’s house. It was barking and was following me. I did what I do anytime a dog comes after me, I just start walking. Walking seems less threatening than running. He (or she) wandered out into the street behind me. That’s another reason I walk. If the dog follows me, I don’t want it  to get hit by anything. Eventually, by the time I got to the edge of it’s yard he (or she) retreated back to the porch and I continued on my way.

I finished my run in just under 43 minutes. Definitely s a slow day but not the worse I have ever had. Whenever I have a day like this, I find that it’s important to remember that some days running is going to come really easy and feel really great and other days there is going to be a struggle (and some pain). You need the bad days to really enjoy the good days of running. Running isn’t a easy thing but the daily challenge is what makes it worth it.