The Road to Recovery

For the last couple weeks I've really gotten serious about doing my ITB stretches multiple times a day, stopping running as soon as I feel even the faintest twinge, and really working the tendon out with a foam roller that I found at my gym (...man, I'm really falling in love with the foam roller... it hurts like a mutha-f*cka when I'm applying it but the aftermath of feeling my ITB tension release is somewhere close to orgasmic). Still it just didn't seem like it was improving... And just as I was finally starting to let the frustration and self pity of my ITBS get the best of me I received a glimmer of hope in the form of a stellar running workout...

Check it. Today I get on the treadmill ready to try my usual recipe of walking a quarter mile, running a quarter mile, rinse and repeat. So I start running my first mile and when I come to the end of it I realize that I feel great; not even a hint of ITB pain. So I turn up the speed by :34 seconds per mile and decide to try a second mile... finish up the second mile and still not pain so I crank up the pace by another minute per mile and pound out another mile, and then another, and then another... now I'm feeling tired so I back the pace off 30 seconds and proceed to crank out two more miles... for a total of SEVEN MILES!!!!

At that point my ITB still wasn't bothering me, but I was starting to get tired and I figured I had already overdid it by about 5.5 miles so I better stop...

So the tricky part now is to force myself to proceed with caution... I got the ice on right now, and I plan on doing only cross-training tomorrow no matter how great my legs feel or how much I want to run... and after that I have to somehow will myself to take it easy for the next couple weeks. I'm finally on the road to recovery, but I know from experience that it's one road that you don't want to race down.