Tricks of the mind

It's been a tough week for my mile each day.

Although I have kept going each day doing my mile, it has been the minimum mile-and-a-bit circuit for the last five days.

A niggle that I experienced in my right shin a couple of weeks ago had steadily got worse, such that the past few days I've ended up hobbling round my little circuit a good 3 or 4 minutes per mile slower.

It's funny how our minds take a basic fact, such as my shin is painful when I run and even when I walk, and expand that fact into a whole story and a certain outcome.

For example, the last time I had bad shin pain was in 2006 whilst training for the London marathon. I had upped my training quite drastically, running regularly with some faster colleagues, which meant I was constantly pushing myself to keep up. I had also started running on roads a lot, whereas I had always tried to mix in some off road surfaces on my runs before.

The cause of the pain in 2006 was eventually diagnosed as a stress fracture in my right tibia (the same shin that has been troubling me the last few days), resulting in me having to withdraw from the marathon and not being able to run at all for six months.

So where did my brain go as soon as I had the acute pain that reduced me to a hobble this week?

It was quick off the mark to tell me that I must have refractured the same bone and that any day now I wouldn't be able to run at all, because it could never repair unless I stopped completely.

Unsurprisngly I think, I found this a little on the depressing side.

But nevertheless, I persevered with my minimal mile-and-a-bit at a slower than slow pace, and miracle of miracles today, although still tender, my shin allowed me to run at least two minues quicker than I have managed for the past four days.

So perhaps there's another explanation? After all the fact is that I have had shin pain that has stopped me being able to run properly for the past few days. A separate fact is that I did indeed fracture my tibia in the same shin six years ago.

Despite the best workings of my internal saboteur, maybe those two facts are completely unrelated.

For the past 927 days I have had several twinges and problems that have slowed me to something not much quicker than a walk, but so far (he said with crossed fingers) my trusty mile has kept me going and through the other side.

Long may it continue.

Could your mind be connecting two separate facts into a certainty that just might not be certain after all?