I noticed it’s considerably worse when I run outside on the street/sidewalk as opposed to on a treadmill. I usually run first thing in the morning so I’ve taken a few minutes to stretch my legs thinking that may be the cause but it hasn’t really helped. The only other thing I can think of is that I have flat feet.
Anyone else deal with this and have an idea on how to overcome it?
There’s no silver bullet for shin splints but the thing that worked for me was to ditch pavement for 2-3 weeks and basically slog up the steepest hill I could find on a dirt trail. I used to run to and from work, 3-5 miles 10-12 times a week, not a really balanced way to do things (no long runs), but when it’d act up I’d just walk to work and on the weekend spend 2-3 hours basically running up one big dumb hill and walking back down, try to get as much feet of gain per hour as I could (made it a little less boring to focus on that). Basically strength training for someone who would rather be running than strength training. Couple weeks of doing that and I was ready to go pulverize my ankles again for a solid couple months.
Edit: emphasis on walking down the hill, tremendous impact if you’re on some 25% grade, recipe for disaster if you’re throwing yourself down that thing for hours
Thanks, I’ll see if there’s some trails suitable for running in my area.