I’ve had 3 sessions so far of physical therapy for my persistent shin splits at Foothills Sports Medicine. They offer a lot of attention there (this is my first experience ever, so have nothing to compare it too). Andy, the physical therapist, identifies definite classic shin splits as well as possible bursitis just below the knee cap. He’s been working the muscles by some hard massage, teaching me to do more with The Stick, hitting the muscles with ultra sound and electrical stimulus (whatever that little box is), and doing a bunch of stretches, and leg muscle work to build up the muscle.

He is very confident my troubles have been a combination of perhaps shoes that did not fit well enough, ossible too much running in one direction (where the slant of the street strained one leg), and the typical issue of going from my usual work mode (sitting in a chair for hours) to getting hard exercise. Andy’s rather firm that there is not much sense in pushing oneself to do a full marathon, that most people have those crashes at 18 miles and just damage their bodies pushing to 26, and is convincing me to be sane and just run better at half marathon distance.

On Saturday, I gave it the first decent workout in a while as Travis and I did a tough hike, maybe 9 miles total up and back on the Barnhardt trail, more than 2000 feet elevation change each way. We were both worn out after that, but it felt really good to get outside and get some darn physical activity.

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I’ve not run since walk staggering over the finish line for the PF Changs run. The pain in the left leg reached its peak the week after, but never really completely left (Still moving around with a slight limp), so I am doing what I should have done back in January, going in for some physical therapy. I thought I could avoid some hefty co-pays by resting, but that is not working, and I am feeling gravity pull at my laziness!

Today I had the nice opportunity with meet up for breakfast with Cliff, someone whom I’d been in contact with by email and blog comments going back to August.

He has an interesting life with several months a year living, working, running, photographing in Peru. He even gave me one of the colorful Peruvian winter hats, useful for cold morning runs (the last I saw was back on face day, January 14!).

We were talking about his recent trip to Panama for work, which reminded me I had recently read an article on the remodeling being done on the canal. He asked if that was an article in Wired magazine, and I said yes… “I wrote that article!” said Cliff, and yep, he was right. Small world indeed!

It was great to make a connection with someone who trained at the same time as me, and Cliff had offered some great advice and support along the way. We may even get to cross paths next October as we both have trips to Australia lined up.

Keep running, Cliff!