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My training plan has once again been compromised because of my shin splints. I took an MRI over the weekend which thankfully did not show any stress fractures, but had I continued with my training as planned, that would soon be a different story.

There is no treatment that can magically fix shin splints, other than strength training and managing my running load.

14 weeks out from my first marathon, this is not the news I want to hear. The realistic thing to do now is to reassess my goals. Having two weeks of significantly reduced intensity and volume will get me to 12 weeks out. Then I have to gradually build back up again. I'm expecting to take about 6 weeks to be back to where I am now, giving me another 6 weeks to build before starting my 3-week taper.

That's not a lot of time.

I don't know how my body will react to this restructured training. Maybe I'll be able to get back into it sooner. It's probably not worth the risk though.

As frustrating as this all is, marathon training was never meant to be easy.

I also need to keep in mind I'm not just running one marathon this year––I'm running 3. In the span of 4 months. I would be doing things a lot differently if I only had one marathon to train for. Doing 3 makes it so much more important that I'm properly conditioned going into this because I have such a short time between races to recover.

Maybe I am crazy for wanting to run 3 marathons this year (especially if I've never ran one before). I don't care. I'm in it for the journey.

P.S. - I won't do a breakdown of each run this week since I did only three recovery runs. Nothing exciting there. Hopefully next week I have something more to share.

Weekly Summary:

Total Distance: 26km ;(

14 Weeks Out.