I suffered "shin splints", after upping my running milage from about 25 miles a week to 40 miles a week. You will soon know if its general muscle soreness from exercise or a "shin splint" classified injury.
It took me about 3 months to recover to the point of no pain. From the onset, it was a bruised like feeling in my shins, mostly the right shin along the front and to the inside about halfway up. It would hurt when starting a run, after about a mile, the pain would subside, but then after the run, it would return then slowly get a bit better over the following days (as it subsided over a few days I assumed it was just a by product of upping milage, tired legs, thought I should work through it). The next run, it came back.
Over a period of a few weeks the pain got worse and extended outside of running to walking, sitting, laying down etc and was very painful as if heavily bruised when touched, at this point I ceased running for a good 3 months before the pain subsided. I had to start running from scratch to ease back in with tiddly 3 mile runs at the beginning of this year.
Zoiders, its an umbrella term, not a conspiracy theory!