I think I see someone in town running with one of those things on... always wondered what it was.
I can say this, the 3rd time I went to CO, I did a LOT more leg lifting, and stretching those muscles while holding dumbells of weight. That did a LOT more. I had to have leg strenght and not upper body.
Of course I did a lot of walking with 80 pounds in the pack of limestone road base....
And I did bleachers every other day, even sideways to build all the knee/ankle joint stuff up strong. But did that at the local HS track/football field. I did the bleachers without weight though, and ran each end of the track and got to the point I could run the bleachers and the track.
I don't know about ibuprofen but aspirin sure seemed to help us. And an RX of Diamox just in case in the pack.
