Well, the doc said to take 3 days off, and then if it was possible for me to “ease back into it,” I could start running again. Over the past 3 days, I’ve followed his orders as closely as possible—going so far as to work from home the rest of Tuesday, and all of Wednesday and Thursday, to make sure I was able to properly ice my hip/upper thigh every hour or so. (I didn’t think HR would appreciate me doing this at work, even if I closed and locked my office door.) I’ve also been taking Aleve or Ibuprofen regularly, and most important of all, aside from mowing the yard yesterday, I’ve been resting.
Earlier this afternoon, approximately 72 hours after leaving the doctor’s office, I set out for my first run since last Saturday—a nice easy couple of miles with a good warm up and warm down, plus plenty of stretching afterwards. It went well. Early on, there were a couple of times when I thought I felt some tightness across the top of my outer thigh, but then it would go away. Perhaps it was just some phantom soreness/tightness. Towards the end, I did feel some tightness a little further down my thigh towards my knee, which leads me to believe that this is all due to a tight iliotibial band.
When I got back to the house, I looked up some iliotibial band stretches, and incorporated those into my typical post-run stretching. After stretching, I took some Aleve, and iced for about 15 minutes. Everything feels good, but of course I stopped just short of where the real discomfort and pain typically had been coming on. I’ll continue to ease back into it for the next several days to couple of weeks and take it from there. Fingers crossed.