outside lower leg pain (Read 504 times)

It's been almost 9 months since i finished up running my senior year of high school cross country and i have just begun to run again in preparation for the running section of the Army ROTC physical fitness test that i will have to take in a month (a 2 mile run in under 15:00 ). The problem is (besides the late start) that after running for a couple days i have begun to feel a significant amount of uncomfortableness in the muscle on the lower outside of my shins. At first i thought it might be shin splints since they have given me problems in the past but shin splints aren't associated with the outside shin muscle (as far as i know).

 

I don't think that i have been overdoing anything distance wise (2-3 miles, usually 2) although i may have been a little too exuberant with my speed at times. If anyone can let me know what's going on and what i should be doing it would be greatly appreciated. I can't really afford to take to much time off but i guess i don't have a choice.

 

BTW my feet are on the flatter side and my shoes are Nike Structure 13s if that helps at all.

 

Dan

Did you problem start when you put in quite a few miles in those shoes or when you just switched to these shoes?  I'm not too familiar with the shoe but, from the name (Structure) and if they are at all what they were a few generations ago, I would assume they are more of a heavy-duty stability type of shoes???  If so, tendency of those stability shoes is to have some medial post that would not only stop your legs to roll inward naturally (natural pronation) but also push your feet outwardly, in other words, put your leg into a supination position naturally.  This would cause all the muscles, ligaments, tendons OUTSIDE your legs to be overly stretched, causing, in many cases, ITBS.  People with flatter feet tend to either roll outwardly or inwardly exessively depending on your leg structure.  While we cannot, and should not, assess or assume based on just one variables (i.e.; shoes), you'll need to look into all those possibilities.  If you have a tendency to roll outwardly (supination) and if you've been wearing those shoes for quite some time, chances are that your legs are being pulled in excess outwardly, causing that area to be sore.  Or, if the problem started as you started to wear these shoes and if these shoes are, if my assumption is correct, heavy-duty stablity shoes, that might be the cause of it.

It is a good start that you don't think you have done the actual training in excess or dramatically increase the mileage or speed; then the next logical step would be to check your equipment.  But the equipment (=shoes) interact with may different variables such as your leg structure, stance, wide or narrow hip, where you run--in your case, I can't remember if you said BOTH legs or just one leg but, if it's just one leg, logical place to look into is the side of the road you run--one side of the road all the time or you move around to even it out...

I'm not saying one way or the other because I don't think the situation is quite clear as yet.  But I like the way you're trying to pin-point the cause of it.  Look a bit more closely and think of all the other variables.  Very many occasions, people KNOW what the problem is; they just can't see it.