Pwinkle

Congratulations on your first marathon and great to see you are going for a second. Try not to give up. I am not an expert so there is not much I can give you in terms of advice except to tell you what works for me. For almost all my lower foot aches and pains. I over came them by making sure not to land heavy on the ground. I always run light landing with my knees slightly bent and remember to always pull my foot quickly from the ground. Now I must let you know that I am a forefoot striker. (Land on ball of foot). I never flex my calves I land light and quickly pull my foot form the ground. I always try to maintain my form, running as if the ground is burning hot quickly pulling my foot from the ground. The trick is not to land hard with a straight leg sending all that shock up your leg. Position your body to allow the muscles and tendons to gently absorb the shock. Landing very light with your knees slightly bent will allow this to happen. One suggestion that you will read here is to maintain a 180 cadence. Some runners will insist they cannot do it without running too fast. However, for most runners running form is easier to maintain at a fair level of speed. Therefore, I am not sure that is a sufficient excuse. The trick is to just keep working at increasing your cadence over time it does not come natural for everyone. I have focused on two main things to improve my running LHR training and running technique. The truth be told I found as much and possibly the greatest benefit from running technique.

One additional note I would add is that to me running and especially distant running is far less stressful on someone who is not only physically fit, but also if they are at a low body weight relative to height and maintain a good diet that allow the body to heal itself.

I mention all the above because I am sure you will here all kinds of physical therapy especial rest and ice. Running like walking to me is natural and shin splints and all these other aliments (b/c even if this goes away you are very likely to get something else) are not supposed to plagued runners indefinitely or repetitively. I think if we focus on the underline causes like running technique, building aerobic base through LSD, diet and weight management we would be better served.

I agree with the others. Form, running-specific strengthening, stretching.

Not sure if you're doing any kind of drills or whether just running, but drills, esp. multi-directional, besides running can improve strength of some of the smaller muscles. I used to have some major problems, and PT diagnosed some muscle weaknesses and imbalances and gave me a bunch of drills. Some of the benefits are more obvious in trail running where we may not be going straight, but using some multi-directional and proprioception drills helps strengthen some of those other muscles and reduces chance of injury in road running also. I'm 30s mpw and can feel it when my running gets ahead of where my strengthening is. I try to focus on the strengthening in early base (Nov-Dec), then more on running later, and hopefully that base strengthening gets me through the next summer.

BTW, have you ever been to a good PT about your injuries to see if there's an underlying cause that manifests itself differently with each buildup?

In particular for the shins, do you do any toe raises or heel walks?

PS: Running-specific strengthening usually involves using muscles in multiple directions and in either a diagonal fashion or one-legged - like running. For instance, one-legged balance squats where you reach forward, backward, sideways with airborne leg; lunges in multiple directions, etc.

http://This message has been edited by AKTrail (edited Jul-25-2007).

How about slowing down, including plenty of trails and other varied terrain, and putting some good hilly routes in your regimen. Dump the speedwork for now and go back to that place where running is fun. (?)

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Some of the usual advice:
1) Check your shoes. If they are old, try some new ones to make sure the old ones aren't dead or close to it. Try and make sure the model you have work well for your running gait. If you are not sure, visit a running specialty store to find some recommendations, especially one that videotapes you while you run and analyzes the video.
2) Vary your terrain and/or avoid harder surfaces. Concrete sidewalks are usually very consistent surfaces but they tend to be the hardest. If you can do some miles on pavement, trails, the treadmill, grass fields, anything softer, try to do that to minimize the pounding you get from concrete.
3) For shin splints, gently ice massage them (freeze water in a cheap plastic bottle or cup and roll it over your shins). Strengthen your lower legs with toe taps. When you are sitting down, just tap your toes up and down. You can even do this at work if you work at a desk without anybody knowing. Build up slowly to 100 or more taps at a time per foot.
4) Build up your base mileage very slowly when not in marathon training mode. If you train 4 months for a marathon, then you can build up your mileage over the other 8 months very slowly to a level just below what you expect to start with in your marathon buildup. So say your marathon buildup starts at 40 miles, take 8 months to build up from where you are to 40 miles.
5) When you are building up and have a history of injury from increased volume, try and keep the intensity low during your buildup. Avoid too much fast running to minimize the stress involved.

Just because you got hurt before at 40 mpw, doesn't mean you have to get hurt again at the same threshold if you allow enough time for your body to adapt to it. The problem is that everybody adapts at different rates. Maybe one person can go from 20mpw to 40mp in 2 months but another person may take a year to get there without injury. Good luck!

Maybe you're just not ready to run 40mpw (as others have basically said). Your muscles can be trained to run 40,60,80 mpw very quickly but ligaments and connective tissues require lots of long term SLOW buildup. Shin splints, to me, mean either you're running too many miles or you're running them at too fast a pace. Your running form and/or the surface you run on can affect the how many miles is too many and how fast is too fast factors. You need to determine this for yourself. I'd back off on either pace or distance for now.

It simply means that is your upper limit for right now. you can work on rasining that limit slowly. Consider doing a few weeks in the high 30's than a 40 mile week. Follow the 40 mile week with a 25 mile week than go back to high 30's for a few than a 42 mile week than a cut back and so on.

The problen isn't the 40 mile week it's sustaining it for too long. I build miles like climbing steps. i'll push one week than recover. When I try that mileage again after recovery it doesn't seem so hard. Than I'll make another jump and follow it with full recovery. Soon what was hard is now very simple. Stress/adaption is the name of the game.

This is how mileage gets people in trouble. I swear runners become so fogged by numbers they completely lose contact with the actuall training effect. Thats how I got injured all the time. Anymore I take each day as an indiviual training session. I rather not run at all for that day if it isn't helping me build up. Writing a schedule out on paper always done me more harm than good.