Howdy all CR Members

Firstly if this topic has been discussed before please point me in the right direction.

I am doing Half Ironman in May 08 for the second time and also Ironman in December, but when ever I do long slow runs I have alot of trouble with my ITB and after visits to 2 different physio's they have instructed me to lookinto changing my training, to short high intentsity running as my ITB does not get sore whilst doing this.

So what im asking; has anyway ever trained for a Half or Full Ironman with no long distance running? and if so what running programs/sessions did you do?

Or if you have idea's on good interval running sessions which you think could help me please post.

Thank you

Hi neavesy,
In 1999 I did my 2nd Ironman off 8km per week of runnning due to ITB injuries. It wasn't a pretty run at the race.

Whilst I can see your physio's point in the short term I would certainly think that if you focus fixing your muscular weaknesses and biomechanical issues then you should be runnning decent km well before the full Ironman.

I would suggest if you are doing intervals to do some 3/4 paced 100 run throughs and 400-1600m solid efforts and really focus on running correctly with good stable hips and no lazy faults in your runnning. Also stretch your glutes and ITB between efforts ontop of whatever work you have been given by the physio.
Don't run flat out though as this seruiously loads your glutes and ITB as well as your quads and calves. I would think you are better off focussing on runnig qualtiy rather than runnning intensity.

Train safe

before getting into any training theory stuff, here is 1 important question :

what shoes do You use fro LSD ? are they different to Your normal shoes etc ?

the reason is, that there are runners who would use different shoes for LSD, or say for anything approaching 20km and above, reasonoing they need extra cusioning because of this ir that. They sufer biomechanics is different and high tech shoes are basicaly damaging teh body.

There is teh recent example here on CR of the very good runner who cant translate his running into solid marathon time,

allways suffering with cramps etc. He is using high cushioning shoes for marathon because he says his feet cant take more than 20km on the road in racing flats.

Good education about this is free downloadable e-book from Gordon Pirie.

I have tried using different shoes in racing to training but at the moment, I am training and racing in the same shoes, regardless of distance. Nike Structure Triax.

B+ I hear what your saying, in looking at fixing the problem rather then dodging it, but I have been trying to fix it for a while now and have had people look at the way I run and seems to be ok. So yes I will continue to try running exercises to fix ITB soreness.

You mentioed fixing muscular weekness, I assume you mean stretches and work outs on this muscle, do you have any sugestions, as I have a few stretches but no many.

Thanks