dog walk and gym

Yesterday's retail therapy did me more good than uplifting the soul. My body has thanked me for it as well.
A 2 mile plus a football field dog walk this morning and 45 minutes cross training in the gym later. Not bad for a Sunday.
 I have a two mile route that I use sometimes for a quick (for me) run, the first half is up, up up, then the reward with a nice coasting downhill to home. I took the dogs on this route and we had a short trot around a nearby field on the way. We have some rough waste ground nearby where they can go off the lead and stretch their legs and play, but someone with a scrambler bike has made it virtually impossible to walk through now, and it's very very muddy. Now the dogs don't complain about this, not one bit, but I certainly do! Heidi loves rolling in anything that's smelly and wet and muddy, it's a bitch thing - they like to disguise their smell from possible predators, so I'm told. Personally I think she just likes to see me groan!!! Anyway, due to this impassable piece of ground and the fact that it's winter time, so daylight hours are limited (non existant in the week due to work), they've not had a chance to stretch out for a while. I let them of the leads today and they were like spring lambs about the place. In fact, it's very much like an early spring day out there, cold, but windless and sunny.
 My left shin is settling, but still grumbling away in the background, so a trip to the gym while my daughter was cooking lunch (it was her turn today). 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer and 20 minutes hill walking was all I had time for. I did do a 5 minute trot on the treadmill afterward and just left it at that.

I wonder if it's too much treadmill running that has caused this flare up on the shin? I tend to leave it on no incline for much of the run while I'm trying to regain some fitness, but I think I'll just slow the pace and up the incline as per advice I've seen when it's settled and see what happens.

This particular problem caused me much grief last year when I was training for London. I was so determined that I was doing VLM come what may that all I did was made a bad problem much much worse. In the end, after much patient treatment from a lovely sport therapist, I made the start line and got to the end in 6½ hours in something of a state! Very much a pw for me and it took so long to recover because I was so very undertrained that I've learnt a valuable lesson. Slowly does it and rest and recover when necessary is now my motto.