What exercise can I do while letting a lower leg injury heal.

[rickjames8]

Hello all,

I am relatively new to running. I've been running on and off for 3 years, but only recently started to run regularly with the aim of trying to train for a marathon. I found some good 4-month training programs and was running to build a base before I started the actual program. Unfortunately, I may have increased my mileage too fast and injured my left lower leg. I was only increasing my weekly mileage by about a mile a week, but I was doing that by increasing my longest run by a mile a week. I went from doing a 5-mile long run to a 9-mile long run in 4 weeks. I never felt like I was overdoing it, but I think this may be the cause of my injury, which feels like a Posterior Compartment Syndrome injury.

I am unemployed with no insurance, so I am unable to visit a specialist at this time. This site has been an amazing help and resource. What I would like to know is what kind of exercise could I do while waiting to heal. It's been nearly 5 weeks now, but I think I've prolonged my healing by going out for short (1-mile) testing runs to see if the leg is better. I still have my gym membership and they offer spinning classes, which are pretty intense. Would that be too much, or should it be ok?

-Rick

[Heidi]

Non weight bearing exercise is the best thing definitely. Spinning should be ok, although they do tend to go up out of the saddle quite a bit which may cause problems...bit of a case of trial and error.
Cycling on a stationary bike and swimming, even cross training should be ok.