Being Injury Prone

I am a very injury prone runner. Whenever I start kicking ass at running, I come down with an injury. 

An ass kicking cat for your pleasure. 

I know, I know. I do a lot of things wrong. 

• I don't follow the 10% rule in mileage increase
• I don't stretch after a run
• I don't cross train. 

Basically, the only reason that I'm not sidelined with a super serious injury is that I'm still somewhat young and able to bounce back fairly well. 

This bunny is very disappointed in my less than stellar training style. 

Before, I used to always get shin splints whenever I get started on running for realsies. That finally stopped when I started to foam roll for at least five minutes after every run. 

But now, I'm beginning to feel plantar fasciitis coming on. I should have seen this coming. I have textbook super high arch, and my dad and my mom gets it. So you'd think I would have taken preventative measures. 

But I didn't. . . 

Good thing that I'd already planned on this week to be a cut back week. It also so happens that I'm having a super stressed and busy week. 

I'll be leaving my college bubble to do an interview in Richmond for a company-that-will-not-be-named. Wish me luck! And if you are a recruiter in Richmond who might be working for the company-that-will-not-be-named, please, feel free to offer me the job! And I also have a lab practical right afterwards. So basically, I couldn't have run more even if I wanted to. 

Okay, I lied. I'm sure I can squeeze in running if I really tried, but I don't want to make the plantar fasciiitis worse. And I'm ready to take a small break from all this ass kicking. 

Thanks nike for telling me why I have plantar fasciitis. I totally agree. 

What can I do to ward off this impending doom? How do you guys prevent injuries in general? Please feel free to share! 

How Much is Too Much?

I am a competitive person, and I like thinking of myself as a runner. Call me vain, but it feels nice to think "I'm a runner," whenever a run gets hard or I'm out there alone chugging away. And because of my competitiveness, I can never find the right middle ground. Races are often horrible (from pushing too hard), or not as fast as it could have been. For 5Ks, I usually try to give it my all. And so far for half marathons, I lose mental edge in the middle when it gets hard. Because I figure, why did I pay $40+ dollars to not have fun, so I slow down.

Definitely my problem for a half. 

Now the reason for my post. Whenever I start adding tempos and interval runs, I get the same nagging shin pain. It's not serious, but annoying and makes me wonder if I should cut back. But with school, I barely get in 20 miles a week, so I don't know where I could even cut back. And I figure that it's reasonable to have some pain and soreness with working out regularly. I guess I'm just not sure where to draw the line.

On a happier/stressful? note, I signed up for my second 5K. I signed up thinking that I would try to PR, but that thought was stressing me out last week, so I decided to shoot for a time around my last 5K's time or slightly faster. I will just give it my all and remember that I didn't do any speed intervals while training for my second half.

I WILL run like hell. And I WILL have fun with it. 

Fun fact: The race starts at a bar. And it will have six pack runners which are group of six runners all connected together somehow. If I had five more runner friends, I would have definitely been up for that.

I am excited. And I will now go contemplate whether the shin thing is too much and I should rest or not. And of course the first pic is from fb I <3 to run. Love that page!

Have a happy Monday tomorrow! And what should I do? Where do you guys draw the line when it comes to running pains?

And because everyone who runs/reads my blog is a sexy beast . . . 

Let's go eat some sexy beasts!