Setbacks, or AUUUUGH.

I've been researching, and recruiting the husband to research, this weird pain I've had on the inside of my legs since the first time I did off-skates practice a couple of weeks ago. I was banking on it being a muscle issue, something that I could easily fix with better stretching and/or better lacing and support in my shoes and skates.

It's something like that, after a manner of speaking. However, it's also more annoying than I could have imagined, and the description of my symptoms fits it to a T - posterior shin splints.

Collective groan, please.

I've had shin splints before. The reason I didn't suspect them again was because the first time I had them, I had the version that runs down the front of your legs, or anterior shin splints. They were pretty easy to recognize, because they were actually on the part of the leg that we normally think of as the shin... with the ones I have now, I was taken by surprise.

I was hoping that this couldn't possibly be what was going on, but reading the causes, I don't have a whole lot of room for doubt. One of the first was increasing your workout load suddenly rather than gradually. I first started feeling this pain after I went to my first off-skates practice. We did a lot of running, plyo and aerobics, all things that my body wasn't used to at the time, and now, as it turns out, changing your workout program too quickly can cause shin splints. Also included in the causes, low arches (which I have), too little stretching (which is almost always the case for me), and running on concrete or another unforgiving surface (the floor of the Coliseum is very definitely bare concrete).

Included in the symptoms? Pain on the inside of the lower leg- check. Pain that seems bad at the beginning of a workout, but relents after a warmup period- check. Pain that makes it difficult for you to straighten your muscles out and walk normally a few days after working out- check. What I was mistaking for delayed onset muscle soreness was most definitely shin splints.

The number one recommendation for fixing the problem is to stop physical activity and rest the injury. Thinking that what I had was DOMS, which you're supposed to work through, I've continued to do my typical workouts, and, of course, the symptoms haven't gone away. Continuing to exercise on shin splints can apparently produce stress fractures in the tibia, which scares me- not because it likely hurts, but because it will weaken some of the most important structures I have for skating.

What I'm basically going to have to do is change the way I train for a little while, until the injury can heal and I can work on strengthening the muscles and correcting the overpronation in my feet. I suppose, since it's Thanksgiving week coming up, that it's a good time to do so.

Sunday, I plan to attend our last skating practice until after the Thanksgiving break. Yesterday's off-skates was canceled due to a robotics competition up at the Coliseum that is supposedly going on all weekend. I presume that it will be canceled this evening as well.

Tonight, I'd planned to do some more aggressive plyometrics to work on agility, but until my shins are healed, I don't think high impact jumps are a good idea. This afternoon, I'm going to research core exercises and concentrate on low-impact, core strengthening exercises like crunches, leg lifts, lunges, and squats. For the next few days, I plan to work mostly on strength rather than endurance training, as well as taking the time to work on rehabilitation exercises for shin splints that focus on properly stretching out the muscles around the area, and correcting problems like overpronation of the foot by strengthening the muscles involved.

Not good news, especially not since I'd gotten so excited about training hard over the off season. But I suppose it was going to be hard to continue to do things like running and high-impact plyometrics over Thanksgiving week anyway. Better that I use this week for something.

In case you can't tell from the tone, I'm a little bit depressed over this setback. But I'm hoping that with research and planning, I'll be able to turn that around and do something useful while I'm not running and jumping and pounding the pavement.