Shinanigans

For anyone holding their breath at my apparent recklessness with recovering body parts, it was all okay. After much stretching and icing and rubbing in funny smelling gels  for two weeks the shin was driven over to Carnegie yesterday (on a purple cushion with tassels) for a bit of a track outing. Saturday was a test to see to what extent the leg has recovered or if in fact I'd created the whole thing in my head, (I'm quite imaginative you see). M likened my approach to driving a car at full speed to see what parts fell off. Needless to say I rejected this analogy, (though knew in my head he was right). But I've been going a bit stir crazy not having a proper diagnosis and I just needed to know. I realise that seems a bit bonkers.

The plan was to warm up with M for a couple of miles and then potter around a few 400 reps and see how the change in pace felt. The spikes were left in the car boot and instead I stuck to some big, clumsy trainers to avoid any extra strain. The warm up felt fine, no tweaks though a bit of stiffness remained. By the time we were ready to work the legs felt well oiled. So, off we went around a very gusty track; working for 400m, recovering with a 90s jog over 200m. The combination of very strong wind and my shin caution brought me in at 78s per rep, a few seconds down on usual pace but respectable and a good stretch for shinny. It all went good but I stopped at 8; no point in overdoing things. There was no pain. Running back on my toes felt so good. It's now a waiting game; no more hard stuff for a few days just to see how everything recovers.  But I'm happy with that.