Pain & loathing

The increased exercise of the last couple of months has inevitably caused a few irks and niggles. Some sore muscles here, a tweaked joint there... but nothing that felt that debilitating. Just the body sorting itself out and getting used to a new routine.

On Saturday I did a 13km jog on the local trails and at about the 8km mark I noticed that might right knee was getting pretty painful. Slowed to a walk and stretched it out, then began running again only to have it become much more severe.... Crap. Managed to walk and then slowly ease into a very slow jog for the remainder.

I rested up that day, then spent the day at the beach on Sunday which I felt helped it a lot too.... It felt great again this morning (Monday) so at lunchtime we hit the oval again for a 4x1km circuit....

Well, after 1km I'd had it. The pain was back and with a vengeance. I bailed and ventured over to do some general strength work. Squats were ok, but lunges were impossible. Double crap....

After some research I've pretty much figured it out as an illotibial band injury - A pretty common injury for runners... And while it's a pain (literally) it's good to know there's a way through it. However, the first step is of course 'rest' and that's such a hard thing to do when you can see the Tough Mudder deadline creeping up on you. Yes, I know that arriving at the 1st of April injured is worse than arriving a little less prepared - but the compulsion to go out there and train is a hard one to shake...

So I'll be focusing on strength work, upper body especially, for the next few days while I try and get this knee under control. Might even squeeze in a proper massage to and a lot of self-massage and anti-inflammatories to see what we can do in the meantime. Fingers crossed...