Times, they are a changing, as Dylan once sang.

Shin splints are horrible and can cause more problems if you just try and train through the pain. I know, I’ve been there, trained through the pain and ended up with the stress fracture. It’s not good and it sets your training back even further than just taking a week or so off while the pain subsides. After training last Wednesday we went to our friends for food and a catch up. The food and the company where as great as ever but the problem was my shins. I mentioned it briefly in my last post that I had been having pain in my shins but, in truth, they had been bothering me for a few weeks but nothing that didn’t ease fairly quickly. Last Wednesday though, it felt like they were on fire and I really struggled to enjoy the company and the food as I sat there in agony. The only thing for it was to rest, stretch as much as possible and try to stay off my feet. I achieved this with mixed success to say the least!

When Chicken text me at the weekend about going for a run I couldn’t really turn it down. Not only had the pain eased but I felt better for having a few days off (while still maintaining a healthy diet). Chicken and myself have played a bit of 5-a-side, had nights out that neither of us can work out what the hell happened and he became my main training partner when I trained for The Royal Parks Half Marathon. Never short of a motivational quote and a word of advice Chicken doesn’t just like a pint…He loves a pint.

I know Chicken is really up for doing the 2 miles time trial and that he didn’t really want to keep the session to around 45mins. With that in mind I gave him 2 options, the first one was to do the 2 mile time trial. The second was to do a session of 5x800m sprints with full recovery at the end of each sprint…you know, just to get that lactic acid really building up,  down by the river. Personally, I didn’t want to do the time trial as I’d done it 6 days earlier and the idea was to do it every few weeks to monitor my progress. Chicken agreed so we headed to the river for 40mins of hard work.

The warm up was a gentle jog to the river, followed by a stretch and then the first 800m. Despite Chic slipping on a large stone and me nearly running into a large chunk of tree , we did the first 800m in 3.34. To our surprise we managed exactly the same time in the second 800m. The third was a gentle 800m which is where we both first really felt our legs getting heavy and our lungs burning. Exactly what should happen really. During the recovery from the gentle 800m we decided that we needed to aim for negative splits on the times and, even though heavy legs had set in, we needed to try and beat the 3.34 that was our previous best. We set off for the fourth 800m and really pushed ourselves to try and beat that time and we where convinced that we had beaten it by at least a couple of seconds…We hadn’t…we’d gone 2 seconds slower at 3.36. I felt that competitive urge and I think that Chicken felt the same. There was no way that we weren’t going to beat it on the fourth 800m. The last thing Chicken said as we set off was “I’m gonna drag your arse over these 800m in under 3.34″… Well, that but in a geordie accent. The fourth 800m was hard but with a final push we did it in 3.31. We’d done it! We’d beaten our previous best. The endorphins really began to flow and the jog home was accompanied with a hug grin and a certain spring in our steps.

So, that’s training all caught up with…Now, don’t forget to buy your tickets for the gig on the 16th March. 3 good York bands, for £5 and all the money going to a great cause! Tickets are available from the City Screen box office of by going to the link below.

http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/York_Picturehouse/Whats_On/All/Date_16_3_2012/