The stick

Now I know what you are all thinking.

What about your IT bands? How did you make it through with all the pain?

How? Easy. Because I had no pain!

But Doug, how did you get rid of the pain?

I was worried. The day before the marathon I did a warm up run and I was in a lot of pain after just a 3 mile jog. Thank God for the marathon Expo. Not only did I get lots of great running gear, I also discovered "The Stick".
This thing saved me. I was able to break down all my tight muscles in my legs and lower back. It did what the foam roller was supposed to do without the pain. The foam roller just hurt. When using the stick I can just feel it working. It was amazing. Since bringing it back from the marathon, I have brought the stick to work. Everybody loves the stick. My supervisors, my directors, my production managers, my coworkers, my friends.

But what caused the pain? Did it come back?

No. The pain has yet to return. Ya see, I found that my shoes are what caused my IT band problems. My shoes. They were TOO stable. They made my feet pronate more, tightening my IT bands. As long as I had those shoes no amount of acupuncture or massage was going to fix the problem permanently. So I bought new shoes. Brooks.
When I was home at X-mas I went to this great running store, whose name eludes me. They did a stride analysis with my original suaconys (too stable) and 5 other pairs and styles till I found the one pair where I felt no pain; a great pair of Brooks that were $40 cheaper than my Sauconys.
Yay me.