Running on asphalt also gives you shin splints. So does running on a track. And on a treadmill. [Edit to add:] I believe that what matters is 1. how you run 2. how long you've been running 3. how much you run per week 4. whether you got lucky in the gene department. People have been running on hard packed clay, over rocks, on granite, and on stone roads -- with barefeet, or wearing sandals, for a very long time. I've never slammed my heels down, ever, though the lovely Aesics I bought when I first started running certainly did make me want to, but I still got shin splints. When I switched to soft trails exclusively, they got much worse. Go figure. Find 5 sport medicine specialists and you find 5 different opinions of what causes shin splints. All we know is that it's the inflammation of the fascia surrounding the tibia. Ballet dancers get it quite frequently, even though they're on wood most of the time, and very often on their toes. I believe it's more to do with structural instability in the hip causing too great a movement in the ankle joint than the surface you choose to train on. Flexibility in the joints is not always a good thing for a runner, and it's far too easy to overdo the "stretching". But that's just me. I may well be totally off the mark.

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Anyway, Dusk. I fully intend to render him in all his glory as soon as this epic-long IDL plus atmosphere render gets finished. I may even actually install that copy of Blacksmith3D I have had sitting on my harddrive for months. Might be fun learning it with Dusk.

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.