I am an accidental fan of the company Pro-Tec (https://www.pro-tecathletics.com). It’s an interesting story.
I always wanted to do a full marathon and my issue like most of the other people is “I get bored of running after an hour or so“. If I stretch myself I can go up to 1.5 hours and then my brain and body literally sends the messages like “why the hell are you still running?“, even if you are not tired at all.
I decided that if I want to run a Marathon, I cannot trust myself to follow a proper practice schedule and I will have to actually register for a Marathon. Lo and behold, the first race I ever signed up was a marathon (42.195KM). I could not believe that I signed up for a FULL MARATHON.
Next few days I was looking over the internet on how to train for the marathon and kick-started some daily small patch of running. I soon realized that I have 2 problems, that I need to address before I could actually run that long distances.
- My heart rate goes crazy and reaches 190+ after 50 minutes of continuous running.
- After around 50 minutes, I will have pain in the outside of my knees. The condition is called ITB. (very well detailed in https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/what-you-need-to-know-about-your-it-band)
I will discuss my heart rate in other post.
I started to do some exercises to make my ITB strong by doing some exercises regularly. The exercises did not help me a lot and I was worried how would I managed a marathon. Literally 2 days prior to my marathon one of the friends suggested to get some bands that can stop the irritation of the IT Band and I ended up in a sport shop and purchased KNEE PRO-TEC™ PATELLAR TENDON STRAP as I was not aware of the right product for my condition, and this was the only band available in the that shop.
On the race day, I put these Patellar Tendon Straps on top of my Knee and start running for my marathon. I did not feel any pain till 28km. I started to have some pain at the 4th hour (please note that I used to have severe ITB pain after 50 min). I was very impressed by the product quality and results. I did not feel any discomfort wearing the band for more than 4 hours.
In addition, I was not using the right product I was using the band for Patellar Tendon strap and was using it for my ITB. Who knew that this small band can make such a huge difference. I am a big fan of Pro-Tec products now and definitely recommend people to try the products
Note: I am not getting paid for writing this blog, this is just my personal experience with the product.
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