The war on the other front

I'm fighting the whole VO2Max battle on the one side -- breathing has never been my forte, but I'm working on it -- and on the other side, there's the fact that, well, I'm just not as flexible as I used to be, and it's causing problems

The largest problem,specifically, is my illiotibial band. Which I may not have spelled properly. Anyway, it's a tendon that runs from your hip to your knee. When everything'.s cool, you probably don't even know it's there. When everything's not cool, your knee lets you know about it. The classic presentation is that your effortless running stops at a specific time -- say, 15 minutes into your run -- at which point your knee puts a gun to your head and says, "We're not going to keep doing this, if you don't mind."

I walk a lot. Okay, I walk like a nomad. This tends to tighten up those IT bands. And they're very difficult to stretch. I'm religious about stretching after a run, but I didn't have anything that worked for my IT bands.

The I saw a YouTube clip of some guy using a foam roller to stretch his IT bands. You put the roller, which is about six inches in diameter, on the floor, lie along the top, and let it roll up from your knee to your hip. The guy demonstrating it was a little teary-eyed, and there was a catch in his voice, but he swore it worked wonders.

I picked one up this morning at The Running Room. The cashier, a lovely and inevitably fit young creature, gazed at me a little awestruck, like I was a soldier off to a foreign land to do some very unseemly task, like clean portas in Afghanistan. "Have you ever used one of these?" she asked.

I confessed I hadn't.

"The first couple of times, it's going to really hurt," she said. "But it's going to hurt sooooo good." Apparently, I'd notice the difference almost immediately. I got the impression that as soon as I walked out of the store, she'd begin praying for me.

I made sure everything was good and warm before I tried it. I went for a 45-minute ride, a hard ride, one of those rides where you have to yell at children and picnickers. Then I rolled out my yoga mat and laid out The Roller.

There are six stretches prescribed for The Roller. I began with the IT band stretch, figuring I'd get the worst over with first. And it hurt. Not as bad as I'd expected, but yeah, it hurt. I made some noises loud enough that my neighbours might misinterpret and consider me a ladies' man. (I am, just not enough to worry the neighbours.)

I went through the other five exercises, each one eliciting a louder (and easily interpreted as more carnal) howl. But it wasn't until the last stretch, the upper and lower back stretch, that I wept. No tears, understand. But there was no question that I was crying.

And ... I noticed the difference immediately. I had no idea where my IT bands were before; now, I can feel that they're looser. My quads, my hammies, everything. Tomorrow morning, I might feel like hell. But I don't think so. It's like having a massage from a masseuse in a really bad mood. It hurts like a sonofabitch, but it doesn't leave bruises, and later, well, it's a thrill to have survived and you feel refreshed.