I am sad to report that I remain injured, more injured even, but wiser. Today I have solved another issue contributing to my Iliotibial Band Syndrome and I hope it is the last.
Over the past 2 week I have been experiencing weird aches and pains on the outside of my left knee cap as a result from my earlier ITB injury. This was a huge surprise since I seemed to be making a routine recovery up to this point. I pulled the hand break on all training that used my tensor fasciae latae (muscle connected to the ITB) and kept up the ITB rolling and stretching. The pain was very irregular, making it all especially scary and I could not find any way to avoid them so to the physio it was!
On Wednesday, Karren (Kumeu Physio) and I made a massive break though. She noticed that there was a slight misalignment of my left knee cap so after a simple taping job to pull my patella back into place she challenged me to go for a run! Initially I was very nervous as my last attempt at the now alien sport of running ending in pain, but 15 minutes later I returned to the physio with a massive grin on my face and not pain around my knee. I was stoked to say the least!
I was ready to slide back into some training again, but after my first run this Monday… NO WAY!!! Now my right ITB (original injury was on my left side) has decided it hates me too. Who even invented the ITB?!
Today I hit the gym with Michael and I think I have cracked it! Over the past 2 weeks my tensor fasciae latae (TFL) on both sides have tightened up something chronic without me noticing. 2 weeks ago I could roll all over them with the ITB roller with no problems at all but now that is way out of the question. I guessing that my body is confused from all the changes in my training and it’s likely it that it hasn’t responded well to the periodic conditioning sessions over the past 3 weeks. As a result my TFLs have gone psycho which is incredibly frustrating but I think this discovery is the end of my suffering. I unleashed my wrath today by doing a solid 30 minutes of massaging and rolling to loosen them up. This was an extremely satisfying stress release and I worked off most of yesterday’s frustration.
Squashing my FTL onto that hard medicine ball ranks very highly in my most painful sessions! But I’ve heard from Michael that the proper massage I’m getting tomorrow will be a whole new level of suffering! But right now I just can’t wait to get running again and will take anything I can get.