I've been experiencing dull pain on the outside of my hip for about 6
weeks now. Its mostly in my right hip, but my left hip has also been
bothering me in the last few weeks. I'm training for my first marathon
and my longest run ever was 12 miles prior to the start of my training
in June. It first started bothering me after a 17 mile long run six
weeks ago.
I didn't do much at first because it was just kind of bothersome ache,
but after it persisted for 2 weeks I began to try to figure out what
was wrong with it. The pain eminates from where my femur attaches to
my hip and seems to be internal, which seems consistent with hip
bursitis. This would be very possible since I wasn't very good about
stretching my IT bands prior to the injury.
Over the 6 weeks its been bothering, I've cut back on my training a
little bit and have tried to avoid hills, but I've stuck with weekly
speed work and long runs every other week. My last 2 long runs were
just over 20 miles, and I'm doing around 40 miles per week. I've been
treating it with icing after hard runs and stretching (3 sets of 60
second IT band stretchs atleast 2 times a day). I've also taken
ibuprofen approx 2 times a week to help with the inflammation.
The pain is kind of up and down, but I can feel it pretty much every
day. Its rarely bad enough that I would call it acute, but sometimes
it is more than annoying. The reason I'm looking more into it now is
that is was quite bothersome on my 20 mile run last Saturday and I'm
worried about it flaring up during the race.
I'm definately the type that is willing to run through some pain, and
I'd prefer not to cut back on my training. I'm shooting for under 3:10
so I can do Boston next year and I feel like I'm on track to achieve
that with my training so far. At the same time, I obviously don't want
to permanently injure myself.
Some questions:
Does this sound like hip bursitis?
Are there any stretches besides IT band that I should be concentrating
on? Does my stretching methodology seem good?
Should I be icing after every run if possible, even when it isn't
bothering me that much?
Should I be more aggressive with the ibuprofen? (I usually take 400 to
600 milligrams)
Any strengthening exercises I should try? (I'm assuming this is more
or a preventative measure that I would do after resting enough to let
the pain subside - after the marathon)
Should I try compression shorts?
Thanks so much for any advice you can give!!