A brush with injury

Looking back on my 10 mile run on Saturday, I was begging for an injury. Didn't give myself the two rest days, ran at pace in two races during the week, picked a route with steep ups and downs and had a few pints the night before. As a consequence, I felt the first twinges of what I self-diagnosed as the much written and moaned about Iliotibial Band Syndrome, or ITBS for short.

Locating the nobble

Without plunging into too much detail, I'll give my understanding of why. The IT band runs down the outside of the leg from your hip to your knee. Its purpose is to assist abduction of your leg which, in this case, is nothing more sinister than the outward motion you would have made while doing star jumps as a kid. When you run and your knee bends, the band slips over a nobble on the outside of your knee. My running style, like many others, isn't perfect. My legs collapse inwards, putting the IT band under extra strain. With gravity assisting, running downhill puts it under even more strain and if it's not strong enough and flexible enough, as it slips to and fro, friction causes the tendon to become inflamed. Hence pain.

The cure? RICE. And cut back on the training. I'm no medic, so please don't take any of this as gospel and do not quote me on the medical term "nobble", I'm pretty sure it's not called that.

Anyway, the result is, after a couple of day's RICE, I'm back to more steady training.