Thursday, August 20, 2009

IT Band rehab - 8/20

As it has been nearly 3 weeks of resting and hoping the IT band will recover, today I decided to give a shot at a 3 mile run to see how things felt. The other week I had done something similar, and at around 1/2 to 3/4 mile, I started to notice it. By the time I got to 2 miles, it was definately trending in a direction I didn't like. It wasn't painful, but it also wasn't going away. That run was done after about 3-4 days worth of stretching and minor strengthening exercises.

Ever since then, I've been pretty good about stretching the band on a daily basis. The stretching I've been doing has been a combination of the typical IT band stretches (similar to #2 and #3 here), as well as the foam roller stretch here (except I dont have a foam roller - only a 4" piece of PVC). In addition, I've been doing side leg lifts, and Walt Reynolds IT special for stretching and strengthening.

So, with a good solid number of stretching/strengthening days, I figured I'd test the waters.

This time, I started feeling it after about 1.25-1.5 miles - about 10 to 12 minutes. Thats an improvement, but still somewhat disappointing. I was able to finish the 3 miles, experiencing only minor discomfort, by stopping a couple times for a walk break. Interestingly enough, after starting up, the IT band would be sore for a few steps before going away for a couple minutes and then reappearing.

Just for the sake of getting all pieces of data on the table, I ran with my shoes purchased in 10/08 - they have about 280 miles on them.

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