Prep and Perks

My IT band has been giving me a hard time over the course of the last couple of weeks – not a good thing at any point, but particularly as I was trying to get everything together to run my first half marathon, the BAA Half Marathon, which is set for this Sunday morning. After a trip to the doctor, a couple of rounds of physical therapy, stretching, icing, resting, elevating, ingesting a lot of ibuprofen, compressing and the initial agony of foam rolling (a process that pretty much left me feeling like this), I was starting to feel pretty OK.

A running friend recommended to me booking a sports massage at the Boston Bodyworker, a massage clinic that features a special focus on highly active individuals. These people speak running, I was told, and can help prep the body for the activity and demands that are necessary to get the job done.