This is the type of post that I hate making. I love sharing my life online because it means that I get to relive my best moments and connect with so many people. With authenticity as one of my highest values though, sharing my life online also means reliving some of my lowest moments, which is the case with this injury.
When I first felt pain in my shin toward the end of March, I didn’t think much of it. I’ve struggled on and off with shin pain since the spring of 2021, and it usually goes away if I take 2-3 days off of running. So I continued on as usual, racing a road 5k on April 2nd, and traveling to a training camp on April 4th. However, the shin pain didn’t ever fully go away, and, after I did a long run in mid April, I realized that this was a bigger issue than I thought. I decided to take a week off and let the shin recover a bit, but, a week later, the pain was still there.
I continued this cycle of take time off, hope for the best, try to run, still feel pain, repeat for the next 4 weeks. Eventually, I realized that I just needed a sustained period of time off of running. This wasn’t a niggle or a “little pain.” It was time to accept that I was injured. Since then, I took two weeks fully off running or hiking and have started to incorporate some incline walking and hiking back in, so far with no pain. It’s hard to accept when an injury occurs, but sometimes accepting that injury is the only way to give it the time it needs to heal.
Watch the video below for more details about this injury and my recovery.
