Scituate Sunday?

I woke up feeling surprisingly good today. To clarify: Feeling good these days means that I get very little resistance from my ITB as it clears the lateral condyle. I still feel it, but very very minimally. I have a few daily tests that let me know how things are going to go. One of them is the stairs. If the stairs cause that resistance/catching, i know it will be a rough day. Today I got very little. Also, if i'm driving and I extend my knee, It will be sharp pain at the end as the ITB is forced against that condyle. Today I felt very good in these regards.

I went to the gym after work today and decided that i would do some hamstring and ITB stretching before my run to see how that worked. It definitely did something, because I made it to the last 30 seconds of the run before I started to tighten up. This is good for a number of reasons. Mostly its because if I stop before getting to that point, i recover faster.

After the run, I did my standard hip, core and hamstring stuff. I felt like my strength had improved, if only a little since I first started doing it 3 weeks ago. I also found that after thoroughly stretching my hamstrings, quads, adductors, gluts, ITB, calves and hip flexors, my knee felt pretty much perfect. There is definitely a flexibility issue going on. I find the most improvements when i stretch my hip flexor, hamstrings, calves and quads. All of these affect the posterior capsule of the knee to a degree...even the quads. If you angle just right on that stretch, you can get a stretch on part of the ITB. It all helps relieve my symptoms. I'm hoping that by staying on top of everything, I can get ahead of it.

I skipped the Voltaren for the day. I need to see how things are in the morning so i can assess exactly how much help its giving me. I feel good still right now though, so i'm thinking its not too too much. This is good because it means i'm not heavily relying on it to get through these runs. I'm planning on running before work tomorrow, and in my neighborhood on the ashphalt. That will help me to figure out how much of the good running is being caused by being on the treadmill. Weird stuff to think about, but its how my brain works. I need to figure out what the cause is of my feeling better for the past 2 days.

I figure it the way a researcher would. You take the 4 variables that I mentioned yesterday: Voltaren, Treadmill, rest from massage and flexibility emphasis, and you start to eliminate some of them. I eliminated the Voltaren today and actually did better that yesterday while on it. Tomorrow, if I wake up still feeling good, I will run on the asphalt and see what happens. If things keep moving in the same direction, then i know that i need to get massage a little less frequently so that the tissue can heal, and I need to stay very consistent with the flexibility. That would be the ideal situation, and its what i'm hoping for.

PC alumni track banquet tomorrow. I'm not an alum of PC, but i'm friendly with many of them. Ray Treacy invited Kristen and I to go, and we of course accepted. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody.