Sunday, April 10, 2011

~34 days~

Only 34 days until my first half. I am struggling with IT band issues. Today on my 4 mile run I had to stop in my tracks. The pain in my knee was unbearable. It took me 20 minutes to walk about .5 mile. I came home and iced and took a celebrex. This is so upsetting to me. I am giving this training all I have and yet my body and mind are not on the same track. It just breaks my heart. My dad had a stroke this week. Again breaks my heart. He is lucky, as it could have been much worse. Yet, seeing him struggle to walk and swallow, is almost too much for me. I am coping by being sarcastic and cynical. Someone has to be. We all can't sit around and cry. I put on a brave face for my family, and grieve silently. I want to run this half for him.

3 comments:

  1. You can do this! Even if you walk most of it, you can go out there day of and do it!

    Brian had IT Band issues before his marathon and with exercises from the PT, he was able to do it.

    It's frustrating, but it's a learning experience and you'll be that much stronger from having gone through it. I have faith you will do this and come out victorious!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Kristin, good luck with the IT band -- when mine first flared up it was so bad I thought I'd torn a ligament, so I understand what you're going through!

    Here's what advice I can give...probably most of this you've heard already or already knew, but just in case:

    1. Reluctantly, I had to cut way down on mileage. I was on an 18-miler when mine flared up. I was supposed to do 20 the next weekend, but 6 was all I could manage and it was 2 weeks before I was back in the double digits. I'd recommend cutting whatever distance you would normally run by 1/2 to 1/3 half so that you're still moving but not putting too much strain on it. If you normally run consecutive days, I wouldn't do so for several weeks.

    2. Stretching, PT exercises, and foam rolling really helped. The foaming really hurts at first, but gets easier. "The Stick" (sort of a mini foam roller) also seemed to help a lot in terms of both symptom relief and recovery time. And it's more portable too, which was nice.

    It was about 3 weeks before I felt really consistently good, and I lost less base than I thought i would. The knee didn't hurt at all during the race, but probably did cost me time and endurance since I hadn't gotten my 20-mile runs in.

    You're at a pretty similar point in training as I was when mine flared up -- taking like 2 weeks off probably isn't feasible, but I think you have time to get this pretty well managed by race day. It took me longer to recover than I hoped it would, and improvement was slow but steady at first, and then it seemed like there was a point about month after it flared up where it just very quickly got almost all of the way better.

    Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  3. UGH!

    THANK YOU for the encouragement. I am going to PT tomorrow. Hoping to get this under control. Today it is so sore. Couldn't even think about running if I wanted to. Very sad. I want this so bad. sigh.

    ReplyDelete