Filles de Fer

Interesting little tidbit that I learned the other day, courtesy of Cap’s roommate (who is in PT school): running on the indoor banked track during the winter is bad for my IT band, and a treadmill set at an incline is better for me!

His reasoning: the banked track, as well as the curvature of the track (since most gyms force people to run/walk/jog in the same direction and alternate by days) makes an uneven surface for my footsteps. This lack of balance is not so great for the knees, especially the IT band.

 I had no clue about this, but it makes a lot of sense - last winter/spring, I trained almost exclusively by running on an indoor track at my gym, and I had some pretty awful IT band problems during/after the Flying Pig 1/2 marathon. In contrast, almost all of my training for Chicago was outdoors, on roads, and my IT band issues disappeared.

I hate treadmills, but I’ll do whatever I can to prevent injuries. Plus, Cincinnati is a very hilly marathon, and I can play with incline to simulate hills - something I can’t do on the track or on the Chicago roads.

Tomorrow is the first official day I start my swim training for the 1/2 ironman.  It’s gonna be more of an experiment trial to test my swimming endurance.  I’m also going to ride the bike a little bit, which will be good for some cross-training.  I have to ease back into my running, which so far so good.  If my hip starts acting up again, the doctor wants a bone scan.  So I’m keeping my fingers crossed! 

So I have to take a couple of weeks off of running till I can see the doc about the pain in my hip.  It’s been two weeks and even w/ reduced mileage to nothing, it’s still not getting better.  I’m hoping it’s not a stress fracture bc that would not be good.  This girl had a stress fracture in her hip, and she kept running.  This eventually led to her having screws put in her hip and being on crutches for awhile.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope it’s nothing major!  Therefore, I must find some other kind of physical activity to partake in.  Maybe this is a good time to start up swimming!