Patience is Not My Forte

I'm not sure if my personality is just strange to me when I try to examine it or if it's truly unusual. Maybe there are other people out there who are quite similar to me but I've not really discovered one yet.

I'm a mix of very type-A and driven with a good dash of really lazy thrown in. If I decide to tackle something, I'm very gung ho and want to fix/resolve/decide immediately but if I don't want to do something or decide it's not worth my full efforts, I can be an ostrich with my head firmly underground. This often means that I will put off little things until they become big things and I get fed up enough to make them a focus. I can't say it's particulary healthy or the best way to deal with things but it's a part of my personality.

Being driven is a key part of my success at work but the ostrich part of me is why I got so fat. Now I'm driven to FIX the fat and get fit again. Be a runner again. The hinderance is that little thing called "patience" - not something I have in much of any quantity and certainly something I'm going to need on this journey.

Today I got to the gym and got on the treadmill. I started out at (for me) a brisk walk of 3.0 mph (20 min/mile) but after about ten to fifteen minutes, my shins started to complain. I dialed the treadmill back to 2.8 (22 min/mile) and walked but kept catching myself reaching for the button to speed up the treadmill. I really had to force myself to not go faster. The shin splints need time to heal and complaining does not equal healing.

I'm going to try to make myself complete this week only walking and reassess how my shins are doing on Sunday. Right now they have some lumps and are tender to the touch.

This is suprisingly hard for me. I'm used to "work really hard, solve the problem quickly and move on" but I can't do that with my weight or my fitness. Add in the fact that although I've been eating to plan since I started, this month has been a series of up and down the same two lbs. I'm really hoping it's just because my body is adjusting but we'll see - again, the patience cames in. I can't tell any changes in clothing fit, either, so that adds to my angst.

But I want gratification NOW, dammit!

Shin Splints & Shoes

When I decided to get fit again, one of the things I really wanted to do was become a runner. I ran track in high school and really enjoyed it. I guess I'd both like some of that feeling back as well as just getting in better shape and losing weight.

Like a lot of people, this is not my first attempt to get into shape or start running but this is my first truly serious one. I remembered that last time I tried, I had a lot of knee, hip and ankle pain before long and I wasn't as heavy then as I am now. This was in spite of my podiatrist-recommended motion-control running shoes.

I'd done a lot of reading about the barefoot running movement and wondered if this would be better for me. I know many people have many opinions of it but I'm a strong believer in personal choice and this is my choice to try. So telling me how wrong I am will not make a difference, trust me. :)

I didn't want to be completely barefoot, though, because the soles of my feet are quite soft and sensitive - not a lot of callouses - so I decided to give Vibram FiveFingers a try. A trip to REI and trying on the many styles led me to the ones pictured above - the Vibram Komodosport. They fit wonderfully right off, even if friends did refer to them as "Avatar Water Socks." I never thought they'd come in periwinkle myself!

I then started to walk on the treadmill at the gym until I worked myself up to running short intervals - like run 1 minute, walk 4 minutes. I noticed that the bottom of my feet ached a bit, most likely from the combination of being weak from wearing supportive shoes and from a lot of weight landing on them. Mind you this is not the screaming pain of plantar fasciitis (been there), it's a diffuse, generalized ache that lasts about 4-5 steps when I first get up in the morning. Then it's gone.

The VFF did force me to mid-foot strike and not heel strike, another reason I wanted to try barefoot running. It's hard to heel strike when it hurts a lot and I had been told I did so in my running past. I wanted to break that habit as I re-learned how to run.

I had a few twinges of pain along the front of my shin when running but nothing bad. Then I decided to try an experiment to see what happened if I wore my motion-control running shoes. This may be the cause of my current situation.

My form was basically the same but I had quite a bit more shin pain. This was this last Saturday. Since the bottoms of my feet still ached the next morning, I decided this was not the way to go and today I went back to the VFF.

Except today I had even MORE shin pain, to the point I knocked off my run intervals after 20 minutes and just walked the other 30 minutes. Now my shins are sore to the touch along the shin bone and I think I have a case of shin splints.

Needless to say, I am NOT pleased. But I know I have to deal with it now. So it's Aleve, BioFreeze and only walking for at least a week at which time I'll see if they are still tender.

Logic says that this may have happened anyway, even without the running shoe switch. It's a very common problem and may have been caused more by my lack of slow build up to the intervals but, either way, no running for a bit.

Ah well, the Couch to 5K can wait and I can walk the 5K I have planned with a friend for Nov/Dec if I need to. But I'll stick with the VFF for now.