Saturday, February 11, 2012

Dealing with ITB

My Iliotibial Band has been acting up since the night time trail marathon. A couple days after I did a 13 miler and it really acted up then and the next day my legs were feeling and was going to bag that run but broke up 6 miles on the dreadmill and felt ok. A couple days later had a fever, sore throat and felt like crap but got started on a Zpack right away and it help pretty quickly. On that Sunday I stayed out of the cold wind since I had just started my Zpack the night before and did a little over 8 miles on the dreadmill watching a movie at a nice slow 5.3 mph pace. It actually felt good and that evening when I checked my fever it was gone. Since the dreadmill felt good I thought maybe the IT Band was better so monday went out for a 13+ miler and the last 2 miles were unbearable. Hurt to walk, hurt to run hard, so all I could do was shuffle home. I then decided to stay off it running till this weekend. I did get back to the pool THREE times this week, I did the AMT Weds and Thursday for 2 hours while reading book two of The Hunger Games, taught some great spin classes and today headed out in the cold windy snow to the forest to see how things felt. I was going to do the 22 that was on my plan but decided I would stick to one lap of this course which is right at 8 miles. It felt really good and the snow didnt slow me down at all, actually my pace was just over a 12 min mile and for this course I think that is the fastest I've gone if not very close. I feel like I made the best decision to not go out and do 22 miles after having such issues with this IT Band...even walking down the steps had started to hurt. Tomorrow Chris and I are doing a 15 mile race in Granville, hoping to not race race it and just run but would like to keep a 10 min mile pace. Am anxious to see how the body feels after that and hope to jump back on track next week. Part of me worries about missing a couple long runs like that but I know my fitness didnt lose anything and I am thinking if I do these longer miles it wont hurt for the 50 miles.....but truth is it's a road run for 50 miles and yes it's gonna hurt like hell no matter what I do LOL

1 comment:

  1. I dealt with nasty ITB issues 3 years ago about this time. I am convinced what caused it was running the *same* route from the YMCA all the time...basically a loop where I turned left a lot. Hence my left ITB. Rest, ice, foam roller, NSAI meds...nothing worked. Finally, I went to the doc and said "Shoot me up." He gave me a huge dose of a steroid directly into the knee. Hurt like hell, was sore for 2-3 days...but haven't had a lick of problems since. Sorta like a last resort thing, but it *does* knock it out if you are inclined to go that route.

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