Running for my life

Running has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.  It started in elementary school with a boy who chased me around the playground trying to kiss me.  (EWWW!) He jump-started my love of long distance running.  Not really, it wasn’t fun at the time, but I was really good shape- I kicked the boys’ asses in the mile run test in PE.   My next significant running memory is from middle school field day.  I won one (or maybe more?) of the field day sprints.  Or maybe I didn’t even win, but I had a good time and everyone made such a big deal of it that it is stuck in my memory.  Next stop- high school cross country.  I joined during my sophomore year and continued through my senior year.  My first year was the best fitness-wise, but the whole experience was fun and built a strong foundation for running on which I am still building.

So that brings us to the present, more or less.  I have made several attempts to run a marathon in the last few (or more..) years.  My first attempt was with Derrick during undergrad.  This is when I learned that marathon training is tough shit.  You will be tired. You will lose sleep- especially when trying to keep good grades in engineering school.  Needless to say, I didn’t make it.  Derrick did it though!  I didn’t watch him run because we were in an … awkward phase of our relationship, but I was so proud of him that day.

I tried again during grad school at NCSU.  (Is it strange that all my time points are marked by school? How will I keep track of time when I am no longer in school?!) I trained with my friend Chris.  We did mostly trail runs and he was way faster than me.  I tried to keep up, pushed myself way to hard and ended up with IT band issues.  Issues that I am still dealing with today.  I went to physical therapy for a while and it seemed to be fixed.. until I started running again.  Now I am trying my hand (legs?) at a marathon again and I can feel the slight pangs of early IT pain.  Damn you IT band!!

So now to what was supposed to be the actual focus of this post:  trigger point therapy for IT band.  My mom bought me a trigger point book a couple years ago to use for my tension headaches.  When my IT band starting hurting again, I decided to flip through it to see if there were any trigger points associated with that area.  Turns out there are, and that most of them were so tender/tight.  Mostly the points are in my gluteal muscles (aka rear end) so the tennis ball has been getting a lot of ass-massage action.  It does seem to be helping so I can’t help but ask the question- is there actually such a thing as IT band inflammation? or is it just redirected pain from trigger points?  hmmm…