Injured?

With my race being a little over 6 weeks away, I'm getting very excited and only somewhat nervous. The nervousness comes from it being a night race and what in the world am I going to eat all day to give my body fuel but not to give my sides cramps. I do ALL of my long runs very early on Sunday mornings, and even my bi-weekly 5 mile runs are in the morning after my daughter and I are up and around, I push her in the jogging stroller.

So, this past week called for 9 miles. I mapped it out beforehand, prepared my things, and set out. I was excited! I felt great almost the whole entire time, until between mile 5 and 6. My right shin started throbbing. Which was very weird to me because I haven't had shin splints since I very first started getting in shape almost 3 years ago. My initial reaction was that I don't want to injure it and not be able to run my race so i called my husband immediately on speaker, while still running.

He said I could keep running and I should be fine. It was most likely shin splints and I was not going to do any permanent damage if I kept running. So I kept at it, albeit a bit slower.

A little later and I was coming up on mile 7 when I felt a tear running my cheek. I was crying from the pain and didn't even realize it! I stopped to walk and called my husband, of course when he answered I started really crying. Frustrated from the pain, and scared from the pain. He immediately heard my shaky voice said "where are you? we're coming to pick you up." I told him where I was which just happened to be the 7 mile marker exactly. I ended up jogging down the road a bit because I didn't feel like standing there on the corner (heh) and considering he had to scoop up our daughter and get her in the car-seat he was there pretty quick.

As soon as I saw the car, I started bawling. I don't know if it was from the sheer pain or from the fact that I was terrified this was going to affect not only my race but also 6 months of training for it.

I limped inside, put ice on it immediately, took 2 Tylenol, and sat with it elevated for a while. Then I headed to shower after my run and ended up soaking in a hot Epsom salt bath for a good 20 minutes first.

My husband said it could be 2 things: shin splints or a stress fracture. Both required resting my leg and taking it easy. I'm sure we both said a prayer that it wasn't a stress fracture (bye bye Half Marathon) and decided that I would take it easy this week and only try to run 1 or 2 miles this upcoming Sunday, instead of my called for 9 miles.

His theory is I've been slowly increasing my long miles every single week and I'm not always able to fit in my weekly 5 miles. At best I can do 1 of them. With an almost 17 month old and her Gymboree classes, play-dates, and temperament, they just don't always work out. It also doesn't help that I've gained about 10 pounds since my lowest weight in my journey so I'm sure the extra weight doesn't help. But that's a whole 'nother blog post for a different day. I'm back on track now and have only gained about 6 at this point.

So, I'm not running this week. I'm taking it easy, and am conscious of it when I'm down in the floor playing with my daughter. Please send good thoughts that it's a shin splint and that I will be back to normal after a week or so. I cannot afford to lose ground in my training with my race being this close and I cannot afford for it to be a race stopper.