Well, here's my attempt to
Well, here's my attempt to answer/address some of the questions above.
What am I doing to target strengthening: walking lunges, side lunges, dead lift, squats, lighter weight squats on a BOSU ball, leg press, leg extension machine, leg curl machine, abductor and adductor exercises, the exercises in a recent Running Times article
http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=18359&PageNum=1 that Barefoot Gentile sent me. I'm also swimming 3-4 times per week doing both a flutter kick and a frog kick.
I'm also doing variuos stretches (which I don't know the names for) that target the glutes, hammies, quads, piriformis, etc.
I've never had any problems with my knees or hips when running in the past (shod or barefoot) and this entire episode sort of popped up with no warning at a time when I finally felt like my barefoot running was becoming very comfortable and effortless. No huge mileage increases. I was making gradual increases of about 1 total mile per week...not each run...total. The only thing I can think of is that I had done a run that involved a lot of hills, which I had not trained for, the day prior to my "flare up" and perhaps I irritated something on that run.
As far as the actual physical exam by the military vs. civilian doc. The military doc didn't touch me other than to shake my hand, but this is not uncommon with many military physicians. The civilian guy did a couple of things to test my knee stability and actually stated I had very strong and stable knees in his opinion for my age and history. Of course, he's the same guy that ruled out IT Band Syndrome because I didn't have pain on the front (top) of my thigh along the quads. I'm holding out hope that the PT will help.
I'm definitely trying to address the underlying problems and not just ignore them and look for a silver bullet. What prompted my original question is the video on the link below from Elite Runner's World. Maybe I should have posted this along with my original question. The doc in the video was very non-chalant about using a cortisone injection to get runners past a race. His statement is that it's into the bursa and not into the joint, so it really wasn't a big deal (I paraphrase of course). Again, I'm not trying to bypass any correction of muscle weakness or form issues, I was just curious if this might be appropriate to use in order to allow me to do an upcoming race, I suppose.
http://eliterunnersworld.com/itbandsyndrome
Edited: 9:16 Central, 2 August to correct reference from Runner's World to Running Times and add link to article.