The weekend has been pretty brutal weather-wise, forcing me to cut my 20-miler back yesterday to just 17 miles instead. I just about had hypothermia by the time I was done yesterday .. my body and mind was telling me I had enough of the cold (I was getting hazy-minded). That didn’t stop me from heading out again today as I was still able to get through a 10 miler this morning. The wind chill both days this weekend were at or below zero, so I did the best I could to avoid running into the wind, although its pretty much impossible to totally avoid the wind. Its funny that when I look back to both days, I don’t remember too much more about either one of the runs except that it was cold … even the route, the music I listened to, or any other things that happened, just seemed to have escaped me. I’m thankful I didn’t get any snow or ice or anything like further south did, although I might be willing to trade the cold for some snow or ice, it might be more manageable.

One thing I did come out of the weekend with is a real sore right tibialis anterior tendon, which runs up the front of my right leg, just up from my foot. I’m thinking its some tendinitis, or maybe a very slight tear of some sort, but the funniest part of it, is that I didn’t even feel it until about 2 hours after my run was over yesterday. Its been real sore, almost painful, but not enough to stop me from heading out today. I think I had to kind of feel if it was an injury or just a sore muscle which is why I went out on it, I think its somewhere in between … it really only bothers me when I lift my foot up or stretch it down, so i’m not sure what that means. I’ve had shin splints before, and I don’t think this fits the normal symptoms, but I could be wrong, only time will tell.

I’ve found an interesting thing about doing long runs in the freezing cold .. whenever I get home, my calf muscles just ache, as if they aren’t getting enough oxygen or blood or something from the cold. I kind of compare it to when you lay on your arm wrong when you’re sleeping and it just about goes numb .. its VERY painful as the blood starts to make its way to it again, thats about how this feels and its only when its brutally cold out. The good thing is that after about 5-10 minutes, my calves were okay again. I’m not sure if that feeling masked the pain in my tendon during the run, because at no point did I ever feel any pain during my run.

So anyway, in order to heal up my leg, i’m on the normal, rest, ibuprofen, using some ice on it along with Mineral Ice… keeping it stretched feels good, and I will more than likely take it easy tomorrow, if I even run at all. This is supposed to be the week when I push the miles up a little bit more, which may or may not happen, depending how it feels.

I guess you can say I’m optimistic that this injury isn’t too bad and that it won’t knock me off my training plan too much .. I didn’t have a real great training weekend and there are just 8 weeks to go until the Ocean Drive marathon.