Runner's Knee

According to Dr. Google, I have Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS, or just plain old runner's knee), and I am going to tell you all about it in a hasty and disjointed post because my blog situation has become dire.

I was doing a 6.5-miler the Saturday before last, and I was coming down my last hill about 1/10 of a mile from home when I felt a minor twinge of pain in my left knee. I thought I could take the last cul-de-sac that I usually do, but the pain increased just a enough to where I said "I'd better not." The next few days it was painful, and then it got about to the 90% mark and just wouldn't get better. I was icing it, taking ibuprophen here and there, and hitting the pool in lieu of running (when I wasn't getting kicked out by the water aerobics class).

I did some research online to see if I could figure out what it was and at what point it was safe to run on it again. My symptoms fell nicely in line with ITBS - pain on the side of the kneecap, no real sudden and acute onset, worse when going down hills and down stairs, and no swelling.

Honestly, I was starting to freak out a little bit. I have AthHalf coming up in a month and a half and 2 5K's before that, and I have a few more miles and a ton of endurance to add. While I was supposed to be adding mileage, I instead took a week and a couple days off from running.

I felt like I couldn't afford to take any more time off. On Monday when we were in Peachtree City, I decided to take advantage of flat terrain and see how long I could last despite some lingering discomfort. My research supported that it should be okay to take it slow, though I acknowledge it could have been a little stupid, too. I was fully expecting to be out 5 minutes before I had to turn around. It didn't feel awesome, but I ended up getting 5.5 miles in. Amazingly, though, over the next day it finally started getting better.

Yesterday I did another 5.5 after dropping the kids off at school, but it was the misery that comes along with running in 80-degree weather that kept me back and miraculously not my knee. That was probably my worst run ever. This is why I set my alarm for 6am on weekends.

So I cured my runner's knee by running on it! Who would've guessed? As a disclaimer, I'm not advocating ignoring knee injuries; runner's knee takes different forms, some of which require more R&R than others. Remember I was also ALMOST better, so it's not like I ran on a new injury that I hadn't been nursing for awhile. Be careful!