Pace is the Trick

I can honestly say I have never felt a 5 mile road jog feel better than todays did.
That's right. I ran well sorta jogged a solid 5 miles with hills on the road today.
Something occurred to me during this excursion. I thought back to when my IT Band started getting grumpy for the first time ever and realized a few things.
One, was I had changed my stride due to another injury. In doing so I started angling my right foot outward instead of straight forward. Couple this with running in worn out Salomon shoes that made my right heal sag to the outside during push off only encouraged me to do this.
When I started off on todays jog I realized how much of my power on my right leg was being pushed out through the outside of my right heal. Normally your power should be pushed out through the ball of your foot. My left leg was doing this but my right leg was not.
I could feel my IT being grumpy within the first .5 miles. But I made a conscious effort to pull my right toes in to straighten out my leg. It felt as if i was duck footed on my right leg but when I looked down it was perfectly straight like my left leg! When I pulled my leg straight the IT Band pain instantly went away!
So looks like a bad habit in form coupled with the very high mileage I was doing back at the end of summer came back to haunt me. I hope in the long run no pun intended that this very dark period I have been in will benefit my running for years to come.
So I will continue stretching as I have been but i am going to start really training my foot to turn inward to match my left. I suspect this will take many miles of conscious effort before it becomes the norm but that is ok. I can work with that.
What a gift todays run was. I forgot what it felt like to run. Nothing cleanses my thoughts and puts things in order like running.
_Jess