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Originally Posted by Wolf  Hey Scratch, was your broken tibia a stress fracture? I injured my tibia in August, not long after my initial diagnosis of diabetes, by running too much too soon also. I switched to bicycling and elliptical and walking, and it's taken a long time to heal.
Finally, it's feeling healed, but I'm afraid to run for fear of re-injuring. I think I'm going to start very slowly, for example, running 3 or 4 minutes initially, and then increasing the runs by 2 or three minutes each time gradually. |
I had a complete transverse fracture of my distal tibia.
What I did starting the first week of March was start taking walks. After walking, I would watch the ankle for any swelling and of course I was always mindful while walking for any feelings of discomfort or pain. Never had any trouble with that, but I was patient about it.
One resource I looked at said you should be able to walk briskly for a full hour without any discomfort before attempting to run again. I worked up to where I took a 2.5 hour walk and covered 8 miles and the ankle was fine. That's how long it took me to build up enough trust before I went to a track one afternoon, walked a couple of laps, ran one, walked a couple more laps, ran one, walked 2 laps, ran one and walked one last lap or so.
But yeah, be patient about it. I'd also suggest that you review your dietary habits and that you are consuming enough calcium. Now depending on your age, the first six to twelve weeks are the most critical as far as danger to the bones due to running. It's during that time as the bones are subjected to the much greater stress that essentially bone is removed, then replaced and remodeled to be stronger. But if you stress the bones too much as you know, they can't recover fast enough because it is a slow process.
I always took rest days in between runs for about the first 10 to 12 weeks and sometimes took extra rest days. It wasn't really until August that I began building miles to get me ready for a half-marathon in November.
Patience is important. I mean, think of it this way -- you are presumably running for the health benefits and of critical importance to that is not injuring yourself while doing so.
