Singing the ITBS Blues

by Brandon  
·

Knee pain. I’ve got it. And thy name is ITBS (iliotibial band syndrome).

If you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t done much running since finishing my first marathon about 6 weeks ago. No, I didn’t decide to retire from the sport. I still love running, and it’s killing me every day that I can’t run. But pretty much since I got back from Vegas, I’ve had some nasty knee pain that I’m still recovering from.

So what is ITBS, exactly? If you’re relatively new to the running world like me, you may have no idea. I sure didn’t. Until I got it, that is. About 2 weeks ago, I was complaining on Dailymile and Twitter about having some pain on the outside of my left knee. I quickly got several responses that all seemed to agree that my problem was ITBS, which oddly enough, isn’t actually a knee problem at all.

Iliotibial band syndromeFrom Beginner Triathlete:

Iliotibial band syndrome is a common knee injury that usually presents as pain on the outer side of the knee. The iliotibial band is a layer of connective tissue beginning  at a muscle near the outer side of the hip, and travels down the outer side of the thigh, crossing the outer side of the knee and attaching to the outer side of the upper shin bone (tibia).

Iliotibial band syndrome is caused by excessive friction of the distal portion of the iliotibial band as it slides over the outside portion of the knee during repetitive bending, resulting in inflammation in this area.

Basically, the knee pain is caused by an inflamed IT band rubbing across the outside of your knee. How does the IT band become inflamed in the first place? There are numerous reasons why the IT band can become inflamed, which can make it difficult to pinpoint the particular cause for any one runner. That being said, possible causes include:

  • Inadequate warm-up or cool-down
  • Excessive up-hill and down-hill running
  • Irregularly high or low arches
  • Supination of the foot
  • Excessive lower leg rotation due to over-pronation
  • Uneven leg length
  • Bowlegs or tightness about the iliotibial band
  • Weak hip abductor muscles

Once I was able to diagnose my problem, I immediately set out to learn as much as I could about it. How to treat it, obviously, but also how to prevent the injury from coming back again in the future.

How to Treat ITBS

As much as I hate it, the first thing I had to do was stop running. The immediate set of treatment for ITBS is RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation). Also recommended is taking some sort of NSAID (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) such as ibuprofen or aspirin to help reduce inflammation of the IT band.

Once you’ve got the initial pain and inflammation under control, you’ll want to do some stretches and strength exercises that target the IT band. I’ll detail what has worked well for me in the next section on prevention.

As much as you might want to, don’t try to “push through the pain” if you suspect ITBS. This is one of those injuries that isn’t going to just go away. And the more that you continue to run while injured, the more scar tissue that you’ll end up creating, prolonging your injury even more.

How to Prevent ITBS

From what I’ve read and heard from others, some of the most likely causes of ITBS are lack of stretching before/after running, and muscle weakness and/or imbalance, especially the glutes and hip abductors. I’ve found a number of stretches and strengthening exercises that have worked wonders for me. Of course, every injury is different and your mileage may vary, but I thought it would be worthwhile to pass them on.

Stretches

For purposes of explaining these stretches, I’m going to refer to the injured leg. But it’s just as important to stretch the uninjured leg, to prevent it from becoming the injured leg in the future 🙂

  1. Standing up, cross your injured leg behind the other. With your arms stretched straight up above your head, slowly lean toward your uninjured leg.
  2. Laying down, cross your injured leg straight across the other, so that it’s going across your body, and your legs are as close to perpendicular as possible. If needed, use your arm opposite your injured leg to pull it further across your body.
  3. Sitting, cross the injured leg across the other, with your knee bent. Put the elbow opposite your injured leg on your knee, and turn your body as far toward the injured side as possible.
  4. Probably my favorite stretch of all is the pigeon yoga pose. It’s a bit difficult to explain in words, so here’s a video demonstrating the pose:
    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVlX5HNKamw]

While not exactly a stretching exercise, I’ve also found that using a foam roller has worked amazingly well in loosening my IT band. I just bought a foam roller a few days ago, and I can already tell a huge difference. You can get a decent foam roller on Amazon for less than $20, which sure beats the price of a massage – and this you can do whenever (and almost wherever) you need to!

Strength Exercises

  1. I won’t rehash the entire thing here, but I highly recommend the ITB Rehab Routine from Strength Running, which specifically targets the muscle groups involved in an IT band injury, namely the glutes, hips, and quadriceps.
  2. Weak hib abductors are a common cause of ITBS, so strengthening them is quite important. Here are some hip abductor exercises you can do at home.

So there you have it, a glimpse into my own personal ITBS recovery routine. I’m certainly not 100% back to normal yet, but with this combination of stretches and strength exercises, I’m confident that I’ll be back up and running soon. And even after I’m back to running again, I plan to continue with these stretches and exercises, so that I’ll hopefully stay injury-free going into the future!

Image from Beginner Triathlete.

Goals for 2011

by Brandon  
· · ·

Personally, I’m not a big fan of making New Year’s resolutions – I’d say they are pretty cliché at this point, considering that most don’t survive past the end of January. Instead, I much better like the idea of setting goals for myself for the coming year.

With that being said, here are my health & fitness related goals for 2011:

  • Lose the remaining 15-20 pounds. I originally set my goal weight at 194, which was pretty much just a wild-ass guess at the time. Now that I’m much closer to that weight (currently hovering right around 200), I’m pretty sure that the weight I’ll ultimately settle at will be closer to 180-185.
  • Run 1000 miles. Yes, it’s just an arbitrary number, but at least it gives me something to shoot for. That’s averaging just under 20 miles per week, which I think is perfectly doable, especially once I get into marathon training mode again (see next bullet).
  • Run my 2nd and 3rd marathons (the Mayor’s Marathon on June 18th, and the Moose’s Tooth Marathon on August 21). I’m sure I’ll run a number of shorter races as well, but those are my “big ones” for the year. There’s one other big running event that I’m planning on doing, but the details are still being worked out, so I don’t want to spill the beans on that one quite yet.
  • Focus more on strength training. For much of 2010, my focus was on losing weight. Then I really fell in love with running, and my focus turned to that. I couldn’t be happier with the results I got in the past year, but one area that is definitely lacking for me is in strength training. Of course I’m still going to be doing plenty of running this year, but I’m also going to put more of a focus on strength training and building muscle. I have no intention of becoming a bulky bodybuilder, but it would be nice to get some muscle definition on my previously flabby body.

One other thing that I’m committing myself to doing is getting back to posting at least semi-regular weigh-ins. It’s been a long time since my last “official” weigh-in, and the lack of accountability has had me being more lax lately about my eating. I’ve written plenty about being “around” 200 pounds, and even having a brief flirtation with onederland, but the truth is, I’ve spent the last 3-4 months hovering between 199-205 pounds. As I mentioned in the first goal above, I’m aiming to ultimately get down to 180-185. I’m in no big rush to get there, as I realize that this is all part of a lifelong journey to be healthy and fit, but I do want to start making downward progress again. I don’t plan on going back to weekly weigh-ins, but I do want to get back to posting my weight at least semi-regularly so that I get that accountability back. I’ll probably shoot for every other week to start off with, and see how that goes.

As much as 2010 rocked, I already know that 2011 is going to be friggin’ awesome!!!

What are your goals for 2011?

Las Vegas Rock n’ Roll Marathon Recap

by Brandon  
·

Well, it’s official – I’m a marathoner!

This past weekend, I travelled to Las Vegas to run in the Rock n’ Roll Marathon on Sunday. If you didn’t already know, this was my first marathon, and I’ve been busy training for it the last few months. Being my first, I didn’t want to put a lot of pressure on myself to finish with a specific amount of time or anything like that. My two main goals for the day were to finish and have fun, and I managed to accomplish both!

Before I get into the details of the marathon itself, let me start at the beginning of the trip. Since I was traveling all the way from Alaska, I figured it would be silly to fly in with just enough time to run, so I gave myself a few extra days to enjoy the trip. I arrived in Vegas Thursday night with my mother, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law in tow. Both my mother-in-law and sister-in-law walked the 1/2 Marathon, and my mom was there for cheer me on. I had tried talking my wife into coming with the kids, but she didn’t think that Vegas would be a fun trip with a 3 year old and a 1 year old. Go figure.

The flight down from Seattle to Vegas was a lot of fun, because almost everyone sitting around me was coming for the race. The couple next to me was from Canada, and they were both running the full marathon. It was the husband’s 13th, and the wife’s 10th. The woman across the aisle from me had planned to run the 1/2, but she had injured her hip during training, but had already booked all her tickets for the trip, so she was coming to watch the race anyway. Last, the guy behind me was also from Alaska, and had actually won some sort of VIP trip from Brooks, and just so happened to be sitting next to a Brooks rep. Needless to say, there was lots of running talk going on!

The Expo

On Friday, we headed over to the expo to get our bibs and race packets. As soon as I walked in, I was blown away by the size of this thing. There were so many booths selling anything and everything related to running. Many of the companies I had heard of, some not. I found it funny that there were even other marathons there advertising themselves.

We started off by picking up our bibs and race packets. Unbeknownst to me at the time, we were there at the same time as Sue (@MrsFatass), because in her race recap, she posted a picture of waiting in line to get her bib, and in the picture standing right in front of her was my mother-in-law. Too bad we missed each other 🙁

After that we meandered through the main expo floor, although since I was the only runner, nobody else was that interested in looking around much, so we were out of there pretty quick.

Fun in Vegas

Friday afternoon we had some fun around Vegas. First we went to the home the of the show Pawn Stars (though with my mother-in-law’s New York accent, I kept thinking she was saying Porn Stars – boy was I disappointed!). After that we drove down to Fremont Street and wandered around a bit. It was still daytime, so the light show wasn’t going yet, but we did take a ride on the new zipline. It was only about a 30 second ride, but still pretty fun.

That night, we went to see Jersey Boys at the Venetian, which was a really good show. If you’ve never heard of it (I hadn’t), it’s a musical about the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Until I saw the show, I didn’t realize how many of their songs I actually knew. I had heard of the group, and I had heard many of the songs, I had just never really put the two together in my head. We also got really lucky with our seats – we had bought cheap tickets in the balcony, because even those were $70, but when we were heading to our seats, an usher grabbed us and moved us to much better seats downstairs on the main level! Anyways, we all enjoyed it quite a bit and I’d definitely recommend it.

The Meetup

One of the things I was looking the most forward to on this trip (other than the race itself, of course) was meeting some of my fellow health & fitness bloggers that were also going to be there. I was disappointed that a number of the folks originally planning on coming weren’t able to, but I still had the great pleasure of meeting 2 awesome bloggers – namely Susan (@FoodieMcBody) and Mac (@fitmacdaddy).

We met up Saturday morning back at the expo hall, where we got this awesome picture taken. We didn’t spend a real long time together, but it was a lot of fun to get to meet them both and talk to them for a bit. I was especially excited about meeting Mac, because he was the one who had planted the idea in my head about upgrading to the full marathon. And thanks again Mac for the ride back to my hotel – it’s a long walk from the Venetian to the Luxor 🙂

Hoover Dam

Saturday afternoon we took a quick drive out to the Hoover Dam (it’s only about 45 minutes from Vegas) to check out the recently opened bridge overlooking the dam. The view from the dam was pretty spectacular, and the bridge itself is quite an impressive engineering feat.

The Race

Ok, finally onto writing about the race itself! The morning of the race I work up early around 4:30 so I could eat a light breakfast and give it plenty of time to settle before the race started at 7:00. I ordered some oatmeal from room service and had just a bit of coffee, then I got dressed, applied my BodyGlide in all the right places, and began to make my way to the start line in front of Mandalay Bay.

As you can see in the photo above, I decided to put my name on my shirt. I had heard of others doing this, the idea being that spectators will cheer for you by name. I figured this extra encouragement might be just what I need for my first marathon. This ended up being an awesome idea. There were so many people yelling out my name. At several points along the course, there were groups of (high school?) cheerleaders, and it was a nice little rush to have them all cheering my name 🙂 I’m not sure if I will do it again in the future, but at least for my first marathon, it was great!

But back to the starting line – this was my first race where the runners were organized into starting corrals to help space them out on the course. With somewhere around 30,000 runners, this is a must. This meant that while the race officially started at 7:00, my corral (18) didn’t actually start until around 7:25. But being a Rock n’ Roll Marathon, there was plenty of entertainment near the start line to keep us entertained while we waited. There was a Blues Brothers tribute band playing music, and a Cher impersonator sang the national anthem just before the race started.

Finally, it was time for me to start running. For some reason, it was taking a lot longer than normal for my Garmin to find a satellite connection, so I actually wasn’t able to start it until about 1 or 2 minutes into the race. A good lesson learned for next time – turn on your Garmin long before the start of the race! The first half of the race was a lot of fun. The course was up and down the strip, so there was lots to look at, with plenty of cheering spectators, and live bands playing music every mile or so. We basically went straight down the strip from Mandalay Bay all the way down to Fremont Street and back. I was holding myself back a bit the first half because I wanted to still have plenty of gas left in the tank for the second half, finishing the first half in about 2:05.

For the second half of the marathon, we turned off the strip, and that’s when things started to get kind of dull. The scenery was nowhere near as interesting (vacant lots, warehouses, etc), there were far fewer spectators, and the bands seemed to be fewer and farther between as well. My legs were feeling pretty good at the start of the second half, but that wouldn’t last for very long. There aren’t too many hills along the second half of the course, but definitely more than the first, which was about as flat as you could hope for up and down the strip.

I didn’t have a chance to meet up with Sam from Operation Jack this trip, but I did manage to spot him around mile 14 or 15 going in the opposite direction (which I think was around mile 20 for him), and gave him a little shout out of encouragement.

Everything up until mile 20 is kind of a blur. As I said, there wasn’t much exciting to look at, so nothing really stands out as being memorable along this stretch, and I was still feeling pretty decent. Once I hit 20 miles, I knew I was in no man’s land, since everything from here on out would be farther than I’ve ever run before. For the most part I was feeling pretty good. My legs were definitely getting tired and sore, but nothing was hurting in a bad way. I stopped I think twice between mile 20 and 23 to stretch out my right hamstring that was getting a little tight. And bless the two wonderful strangers (I’m assuming they were a husband/wife) who were passing out M&M’s and orange slices around mile 22. Normally M&M’s are not something that I would think of eating while running, but at that moment they really hit the spot.

I don’t think it was until after mile 20 that I took my first “real” walking break (I had walked a few steps here and there through some of the aid stations, but nothing major). In those final miles, I took probably 4 or 5 walking breaks, between 30-60 seconds each. During one of these walking breaks, I happened to be right behind a woman who was also walking, and actually talking on her cellphone. Now, I’m not normally one to eavesdrop on other people’s phone conversations, but it’s hard not to notice when words like “orgy” are being discussed around mile 24 of a marathon 🙂

At this point, I knew that I was getting close to the end. And to be honest, I really never hit a point where I was hurting so bad that I just wanted to quit. Sure, I was tired, but not finishing never crossed my mind. There were several times where I gave myself little pep talks, or thought about my kids to help keep my spirits up. But not once did I consider stopping.

When I passed the mile 25 marker, I knew that I was almost done, and that I’d soon be walking across the finish line. We still had to cross over an overpass before making our way back to the strip, so I decided to take one last walking break and send out this quick tweet:

After that, I started running again all the way to the end. I crossed the finish line to complete my first marathon in 4:25:42.

I am a marathoner. And no matter what happens, nobody can ever take that away from me.

(Here are a few more random photos I took during the race…)

Thanksgiving Recovery & Marathon Week

by Brandon  
·

I feel like I’m still recovering from Thanksgiving last week. We ended up doing Thanksgiving separately with mine and my wife’s families this year, which really just meant double the food. We started out with brunch at my mother-in-law’s house, which I actually did quite well at. For someone who doesn’t eat meat herself, it was a surprisingly paleo-friendly meal. There were scrambled eggs mixed with sausage and veggies, and these bacon-wrapped beef steaks that were pretty amazing.

After brunch we went over to my folks’ house for an early-afternoon dinner. My mom made the pretty traditional Thanksgiving meal: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, green bean casserole, rolls, etc. My uncle also brought over some rather delicious moose sausage. I had a little bit of everything, but tried to go heavier on the turkey and moose sausage than everything else. I also only had one serving – no seconds of anything! For dessert, there was both pumpkin and pecan pie. Let me tell you, I am a sucker for pecan pie – it’s my absolute favorite, and this is the one and only time a year my mom makes it, so of course I had some! I actually had a medium-ish size piece of both pies, I was living on the wild side!

All in all, I felt like I did pretty well this Thanksgiving with not completely gorging myself as I have in years past. I was definitely full after the meal, but not uncomfortably so. Still, I know I ate more than I normally would, which kind of led to an entire weekend of not-the-best eating. Nothing completely terrible, and I’m back on track now, but still something I need to be more mindful of, and work harder to keep myself in check in the future.

Thanksgiving Traditions

One of my family’s Thanksgiving-weekend traditions has always been to put up the Christmas decorations, having that weekend as the kickoff to the holiday season. But now that our daughter was born on December 10th last year, we decided that we don’t want the focus of the house to be completely taken over by Christmas until after her birthday. So this year, we just put up the outside lights, and will wait until after the 10th to do everything else. I did, however, manage to get in my traditional Thanksgiving-weekend viewing of my favorite Christmas movie of all time – Christmas Vacation 🙂

Marathon Week

Marathon week is finally here! I’m both excited and slightly terrified at the same time. Now is when all the worry and self-doubt has started to come pouring in, hoping that I’ve trained hard enough. At the end of the day, I know that I’ve put the work in, and that I should be fine. I just also worry because the whole thing has become such an event, with flying all the way down to Vegas, dragging along friends and family, etc. Both my mother-in-law and sister-in-law are coming along and walking the 1/2 Marathon, and my mother is coming too, but just to watch and be supportive. A good friend of mine and his wife are also coming down for support (it’s not the only reason they’re coming to Vegas, but it’s definitely a big part of it). So there’s a part of me that feels a lot of pressure, and I don’t want it to end up being a big disappointment if my run doesn’t go well for whatever reason.

We’ve had some pretty nasty weather here lately, with a fair amount of snow, and now a bit of a cold-snap, so I’ve been doing the vast majority of my running inside on the treadmill. In fact, when I run my marathon on Sunday, it will be the first time in 3 weeks that I have run outdoors, so hopefully that won’t cause any problems. The weather report for Sunday has the start of the race around 40°, warming up to around 60° by the end of the race, which is just about perfect running conditions in my book.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about writing my name on my shirt for race day. I’ve heard of a lot of other people doing this, especially for their first marathon. The idea is that people on the sidelines will yell out and cheer for you by name, which might be exactly the sort of encouragement I need toward the end of the race. It sounds like a fun idea, and I think that I’ll probably end up doing it.

I’m getting to Vegas Thursday night, and won’t be leaving until Monday afternoon, which will be nice to have a day to rest after the marathon on Sunday before I have to hop back on a plane. There’s also going to be some other really awesome bloggers there that I hope to be able to meet up with. I’ve been really excited about this trip for a while, and it’s hard to believe that I’ve only got one more day of work before I’m on my way – and only 5 days until I’ll be running my first marathon!

I likely won’t have any more updates here until after I get back from Vegas, but I’m sure I’ll be tweeting (at least some) while I’m in Vegas, so you can keep an eye out there if you want to see how I do on Sunday!

Review: Running on the Snow and Ice Wearing Yak Trax

by Brandon  
· · · · ·

As winter has been fast approaching here in Alaska, I’ve been getting worried about how I was going to handle running on the ice and snow. I put the question out on Twitter last week how other people handle running in the winter, and I was surprised when several people recommended Yak Trax.

I’ve actually owned a pair of Yak Trax for years that I use for walking around on the ice, and they are absolutely awesome for that. They are really popular up here, and are pretty much the de-facto choice for ice cleats. But for whatever reason, it had never really occurred to me to try running in them. Well, I guess the thought had at least crossed my mind, but I dismissed it almost immediately, thinking they would be too awkward for running because of their design.

Yak Trax
The metal coils on the underside keep you steady as a Yak on the snow and ice.
Yak Trax
Looking awfully stylish in my orange Yak Trax.

For anyone unfamiliar with Yak Trax, they have rubber banding that stretches tightly around your shoe, with metal coils on the underside. Like I said earlier, they are absolutely awesome for walking on ice. I’ve never had an issue with slipping or falling in them. But I was worried that their relative high-profile would make them awkward to run in.

On Saturday, I had a 10 mile run scheduled, so I decided to give my Yak Trax a try. I was pleasantly surprised with how well they worked for running on the snow and ice, and how un-awkward they actually were. Especially on the snow, the Yak Trax sunk in enough that they weren’t really noticeable. They were a bit more noticeable on ice, but it was a small price to pay for the confidence they gave me to keep on running at my same pace without worrying about slipping. The only time they were a bit awkward was the few times that I was on bare pavement. They kind of grinded against the pavement, and probably wasn’t very good for them either. I tried to run off to the side of the trail as much as I could where there was bare pavement, so this wasn’t much of a problem, but something I thought worth mentioning.

All in all, I was very happy with how well my Yak Trax worked out for running on the snow ice. For any fellow runners out there who have to deal with running on the snow and ice in the winter, I would definitely recommend giving them a try.

Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you happen to click through and buy Yak Trax through my link, I get something like 3¢ 🙂