I have only started running regularly this year, mainly doing cross country runs at school a few times a week. I started to get very painful shin splints and asked my coach about them. He looked at my shoes and told me that they looked good but if I kept getting shin splints to get some off-the-shelf orthotics/inner soles. I kept getting them so I followed his advice and bought some inner soles from Athlete's Foot (it's a shop here that is supposed to be very good at fitting shoes to your foot shape). The man there said he had the same problem as me and that the inner soles helped him a lot. I started to use them and the pain went down a little, but it was still well and truly there. My parents took me to a physiotherapist, who looked at the way I walk and told me that I should concentrate on stepping from my heel to my toe, because I tend to roll my feet out when I walk. She advised me to ice my legs every day. She also gave me exercises to do - things like heel raises and balancing on each foot for 20 seconds.
However, even after all this my shin splints have not gone away. They seem to be getting worse. Today we had our school athletics carnival. I am not a sprinter so I didn't compete in competitive races, but I did run in participation events of 100m and 200m. The 200 was first and my friend and I jogged along at the back as a joke, but even after that I was in pain. I sprinted the 100 properly (which isn't very fast) and afterwards felt like I could hardly walk.
I'm beginning to wonder if these pains even are shin splints, because many people who talk about them say to just run through the pain, but I have tried that, and it just gets worse and worse, to the point where I end up almost limping after running. Does anyone have any advice as to how to prevent this, or any ideas about what the pain could be, if not shin splints?