Not to be all mommish on you, but have you been keeping up with the hip strengthening exercises? I find them absurdly boring but they do seem to help. When I slack off, I can feel just the tiniest hint of itbs twinges on longer runs. If I keep up with them, nada.
I also do a few plank exercises with the balance ball and weights, and that is more fun and seems to target outer hip as well.
And what about glutes? Does exercising the butt help w/ the itbs?
Oh, I know you're stubborn, too. Though, anything that interrupts a run can't be good. Did you ever find any strengthening exercises to get it under control?
Well, it's been a bit of a Catch-22. A lot of the stuff that's good for ITBS is bad for my MCL-injury. Anything involving a deep knee bend like squats, or piriformis stretching, would stretch the ligament. And a lot of hip stuff would put lateral strain on it. But I did light squats on Saturday and my MCL ligament seemed fine with it, so I'll begin fully integrating all the exercises I picked out a month or two ago during this week's strength-training workouts. I'll also try to roll more. I've just been doing it pre- and post-run, but I need to be doing it on my non-run days too, just as I do the stick massaging for my lower legs several times each day. I got a 12" foam roller for my office so I can use it on breaks but so far I haven't motivated much to use it. I also ordered a softball from Amazon, due on Tuesday, and I'll use that for massaging the glute muscles more. I've also learned how to stretch out and massage the ITBS once it occurs. On last Tuesday's run, after my brother came and rescued me, I put my foot up on his pick-up bed's rim, while he went into to get the kids, and really dug my fingers into the back and side of my upper leg. It took him extra long to get the kids ready to go, so I kept stretching and massaging, and after a while I could feel a similar kind of 'release' on the outside of my left knee, where the iliotibial band connects to the joint, as I feel in my foot's tendons when I massage my lower leg's front muscles. So perhaps I need to be stopping every mile or so to do this until the ITBS passes.
Overall, I'm optimistic that I'll be able to beat this thing into submission fairly quickly. It was a case of TMTS in building up my distance again once my MCL injury seemed healed. I had done seven to eight miles comfortably as recently as September, but my muscles and tendons must've atrophied a bit while I was in rehab/rest in October. Over the last few months I've also learned about the difference between a ligament injury and a tendon injury. With ligaments, you can't really do much except rest and ice, but with tendons, you can speed up the healing process by massaging, stretching, and strengthening. To that end, Scedastic, if you have a minute, I would like to know more about what specific exercises you do for your ITBS.
If it's the August half that Dutchie signed up for, then you probably have time. Though, I know you want to run it at a good pace, not just for completion. Good luck!
Yeah, it was a bit premature signing up before I knew whether I will be able to do it under two hours. There's the danger my OCD will be unleashed now and I'll be tempted to push things too fast, but since I'm already suffering a bit for my TMTS impatience with this ITBS, perhaps I've already got a good idiot alert installed. If I can get up to 7-8 miles by the end of December, even if that means using the run-walk method, then I'll have five months, or until May, to add a mile per month to my max distance run to get up to half marathon distance, and then two more months to try to pick up the pace a bit before the event. It's only been a day, but I like the way this race will refocus my training a bit. And I couldn't very well pass up the opportunity to lose my race virginity with a veteran distance runner like Dutchie available to guide me gently through the rite of passage.
