Even with twice daily foam roller tortures, stretching, ice packs and threats of amputation, my IT issue has slowly gotten worse. Yesterday, I could only manage 15 minutes on the treadmill before I had to stop and walk it out. My frustration is rising as my ability to run diminishes.
Looking back, before I began training officially, I had been running 3 times a week and up to an hour at a time on the treadmill. I was using crappy shoes I got at a big box sports store with my prescribed orthotics in them. I had no significant pain, other than the general stiffness that comes after extended cardio exercise (you youngsters out there will understand what that is like soon enough).
Even once I started the TNT training schedule, the most I had was some front of the shin soreness. Certainly nothing that made me even come close to stopping during a run.
The turning point came as soon as I started wearing my new shoes without my orthotics. I started having knee and IT pain with the very next run. I tried to rationalize that the shoe guy knew what he was talking about and I didn't really need the orthotics any longer. Since that is really the one variable that has changed between no pain and increasing pain, I'm going back to the orthotics.
This morning I was able to go a full 30 minutes before the knee pain appeared, and that was after walking briskly for 10 minutes to warm up.
Encouraging. I'll see how things go on Saturday. We have a 70 minute group run. I'm going to walk beforehand for at least 20 minutes, followed by some light stretching to really make sure I'm warm and loose. I'm going to ignore my pace program and go as slow and easy as I can manage. So far, I've been able to go longer outdoors than I have on the treadmill — doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's been the trend. Hopefully, I can extend my run time past 30 minutes and get farther into the return trip before needing to walk.
I'm determined to get past this and not let it keep me from running the marathon. Determined.
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