Yesterday I ran the easy 3 miles to kick off week 4 of marathon training, after which I came home to stretch and strengthen myself, and downed a brown rice protein shake. Everything felt fine, but Wednesday (today), as I walked around campus I felt a tightness in my left hamstring. Worse yet, I started to feel slight pangs of pain in the oposite leg's knee. For the past week I've been wearing “semi-retired” (yes, the poo shoes) pair of running shoes, when not running, as my recovery walking shoes; just for the added comfort. So what am I doing wrong? I won't say that I'm in pain right now, just that something feels off in my leg(s). There's a tenderness to them, that keeps me concerned, but I felt well enough to take on today's 4 miles, as long as I promised myself: 1) I would take it easy 2) at the first signs of pain, I would drop to a walk.
Do you know what usually happens at around the 1st mile marker? Any uncomfortableness or sluggishness that I'm feeling subsides, and I fall into a groove: endorphins flowing through my system, alpha-waves charging across my neurons, as running becomes second nature. This is the comfort zone. I know other long distance runners out there will recognize this existing in some portion of their run. This is the moment I relate things to present moment awareness. Breathing in and out, the biomechanics of human essence propelling you forward, and you are neither fatigued nor overly energetic: you just are. I feel like a lot of times in this moment you surprise yourself the most. Maybe you feel terrible, but end up running faster than your expectations led you to believe, like Vincent mentioned, or maybe pain just takes a backseat to doing, and you no longer feel you need to slow down, and take those last few miles at a faster pace than you probably should, especially, if this is a “recovery”, LSD, or easy run, pushing yourself too far could be detrimental to your progress.
Here's the other thing I considered today: what if the pain I'm currently feeling is due to over-stretching? When ITBS reared its hideously ugly head, with crooked yellow fangs dripping with viscous venom so severe that it paralyzed me in fear just by mere thought alone, the first thing I looked into was stretching as a cure. So within my ice + heat + stretch + strengthen routine, I thought, what if I threw off the harmony of balance and moderation by relying too heavily on one thing over the others? It's as if I'm doing something almost right, because I am seeing results, but at the same time the adjoining areas are being adversely effected. Would this explain why, my ITBS effected knee doesn't hurt anymore, but the pain that exists in my left leg has mobilized and, like a rebel force tracking down the shield generator on an Endor moon, moved upward into other regions of my leg? Have I ignored moderation, and in doing so, exerted my will for recovery in the wrong direction? Isn't moderation the key that opens any door? If so, I'd like to see the size of the key that opens the 26.2 mile door now, so I know exactly what I will be carrying on the day I embark on that whole hell of a long distance run.
Hey Joe,
ReplyDeleteI sympathize with your ITB issues! As someone who experienced that and was out of running for almost a year - God, its very frustrating!
From my experience from ITB and other injuries, its very common and almost expected that the pain will travel. ITB is predominately a hip issue that travels eventually to your knees. You end up over compensating so the weight doesn't fall on your knee and thus aggravating other muscles on the injured leg and the opposite leg.
I don't think over stretching(stretch your hips!) is causing you the issue. I'm not a specialist in this matter, but what you described sounds very.....common.
Are you strengthening the surrounding muscles of your legs? What I was told by a physio is to strengthen the inner thighs and glutes.
How about deep massages with a tennis ball? I found that VERY helpful. Or if you can get a hold of a foam roller and use that to massage the ITB. After months of consistent massaging with a tennis ball, stretching, and strengthening it got better.
I hope you can run pain free soon!
This is actually my second go-around with ITBS. The first time was when I had just started running, and it took about 2 weeks to get rid of it. This time, the actual pain went away in a quick turnaround of 2 days, but there's a residual feeling of discomfort, not necessarily while running, but while walking afterwards, that wasn't there before.
ReplyDeleteI think you offer some good advice here. It never occurred to me that a tennis ball could aide in recovery. I'll have to track some down. I should clarify that I'm not condemning stretching. I'm a big proponent of the post-run stretch, even though I know plenty of people that scoff at the idea of it. My concern with “over-stretching” is that I could be pulling the muscles too far, too often, and thus tearing, instead of preparing, them for the next run. This is why I think I'll apply an eye for moderation in my stretching routine.
By the way, your blog makes me hungry. So much vegan goodness!
That's exactly my reaction whenever I read her blog.
ReplyDeleteAnd I never made the connection with the tennis ball thing either, even though I used them at my kids' births to put counter pressure on my wife's lower back. If it works for that, of course it's going to work for running too.
I'm not quite at the point of scoffing at stretching, but I rarely stretch. If a muscle feels particularly tight, I might do a little stretching, but it's mostly a time issue; I just don't have the time to do a full pallet of stretching. Last year when I trained for and ran a couple of 5-Ks, I did the same thing with no injury or the like, and I got my time down to like 20:15 or something like that, but I still can't help but wondering if I'm playing with fire...