50: Bone Stress 101 with Sam Slykhuis

So should we get into bone stress as a topic using my baby Stressy as a case study? So where did we start? Started as a phone call, I think.

Yeah.

Do you wanna provide a bit of context as to your symptoms leading up to that phone call?

Yeah.

So basically what had happened, I think five weeks out from Ballarat Marathon, I'd had a calf niggle, so this is going back a little bit.

So that forced me to have a down week in my training block.

So I was doing less running, no run sessions that week, a bit of pool jogging instead.

So having to modify my training just to deload that calf.

But the calf settled after about 10 days and I was able to get some more training in before the marathon.

Um, but two weeks before Ballarat, the same leg, I felt some shin pain and I sort of self-diagnosed it as a shin splint, and it was the week of this Nike Sydney After Dark tour.

Uh, so it was a, there was a like half marathon, which I was gonna run as a session, which I did end up running, and it didn't give me any grief during that, but it was something that I felt like I was managing all the way to the start line, if that makes sense.

Um, I ran the marathon at Ballarat.

I really felt completely rinsed in that race.

Like, I just felt like I had no energy.

I was really having to push to hold the pace that I wanted to hold, and inevitably I slowed a little bit.

Not too bad actually.

I think I dropped maybe a minute 30 in the second half.

But usually I do love a negative split.

And the first jog I had six days after the marathon, I felt the shin again, and then I re- it was basically like this pain midway up the shin.

Um, it was, yeah, just on one side and I kind of ran on it for about five more weeks, four or five more weeks, and then realized it wasn't getting better, but it was warming up during runs.

So I was thinking maybe it was like a tendon issue.

And then what started happening was that the, the pain started being quite localized, so it was just in one specific part of the shin, not like a, a range.

And I think when I got the real warning signs was I was driving home and I could kind of feel it li- at nighttime I could kind of feel it lightly throbbing.

And then again in bed I was at rest and could feel kind of a throbbing feeling.

And then I called you being like, "Uh-oh, [laughs] I think I've done myself a mischief."