After a rest day yesterday- a 4 mile recovery walk- today I hit the trails again and did 13 miles on the Sawpit Wash up in Monrovia Canyon. I took it slow again focusing on short stride/fast cadence and much to my surprise hit the 5 mile point above Camp Trask right on my usual time.
The run was surprising in that I had zero hip flexer/glute pain. For the last few days I've been aggressively using a tennis ball to work on "trigger points" in the piriformis and the TFL on my right side. For the TFL, I lie on my right side, bringing my knee up so that the hip is flexed at about 45 degrees, and put my weight onto the tennis ball around the hip area, rolling around until I find tender spots. Not difficult, the whole area proximal and anterior to the greater trochanter has been quite tender. Once I find a painful spot I stop and hold for about 30 seconds. I've been doing the same with the piriformis- placing my weight on the ball with knee bent, rolling towards the sacrum from the top of the greater trochanter.
This has progressed from being very difficult to tolerate to mildly uncomfortable, and the improvement in my level of comfort while running is quite astonishing to me. Here is a link that describes the basic procedure:
http://www.active.com/tennis/articles/how-a-tennis-ball-can-end-hip-pain
Mt right knee pain is still with me but not getting worse. I'm icing it now.
Pete Sercel's ultrarunning training blog --my experience with running injury prevention and recovery, and training for the Angeles Crest 100.
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