Tapering down

This week I've been tapering down and thank goodness for that!!! My legs have been begging for a break and I'm happy to give it to them. On Monday I actually went into the Spine and Sports institute where Taber's been having his knee worked on and had them evaluate my legs. The Doctor said I had ITB friction syndrome, which long story short is that my IT bands are agitated because my glutes and quads aren't as strong as they should be to support the miles I've been putting on them. Yeah, guess I should've started cross training in the beginning like I was supposed to!

Anyway, the Dr. did a wonderful/horrible deep tissue massage on both of my legs and gave me some stretches to work on. He wants me to rub ice on my outer knee for 10 minutes a day (or take ice baths) and come in for 3 more massages before the race. He said right now he has 5 different people who are running Grandma's that are coming in for the same kind of thing. Glad to know I'm not the only one!

So far I've done two ice baths and I'm not gonna lie, they're pretty sucky. Once your legs go numb though they get better. And I will say that I feel a huge difference afterwards in reducing the pain in my legs, so that's good. Since my appt. on Monday I've gone for two runs and felt pretty good. I did 4 miles on Tuesday and 5 Miles today. My average pace on the 4 miler was 8:47 and my average today was 9:03. So nothing too fast but not too slow either. I'm aiming for around a 10 minute pace on the actual marathon so my short run pacing is still close to where it should be.

Anyway, here's a great article I found about Running Injury Free with a lot of great tips to prevent injury. I really like what they say about slowing down and taking walking breaks. I had my doubts about breaks but after taking them on our 20 miler and still finishing with a great time I'm a believer! I'll definitely be incorporating them into the actual marathon on race day.