All of the advice about injury is to stop running when you begin to feel pain. And almost always, runners struggle with doing that, despite the fact that we know it’s the smartest thing to do.

I ignored the pain this time. And now I’m sidelined for a week or more by IT band syndrome.

I know it started during the DRC Half a few weeks ago. When I kicked during the last mile or so, I could feel my IT band tightening up. It became hard to bend my knee, but it felt better after I crossed the finish line and stopped running. I followed the recovery plan that was in the 12/47 half marathon plan, which was essentially a reverse taper, for the two weeks after the race. It wasn’t a really huge rebuild in mileage, and my right quad was actually the most painful thing after the race. By the end of the first week after the race, my quad was fine, but there was a little pain on the outside of my left knee.

I knew what it was. I knew I should have rested. But I just tried to do recovery runs, hoping that it was just tightness that would dissipate if I were diligent about rolling and yoga and Myrtl. None of that was helping, though.

In the second week after my race, I was feeling tightness in all of my runs. At first, it took eight miles to start hurting. Then six, then four, then two and a half. So I took an unscheduled day off. I biked to work instead of running, and I did more of the stretching and yoga and rolling with the R8 to try to make the pain stop.

It felt good enough to run the next day, which was Thanksgiving, so I did eight miles. The pain came back during the run, but it was worst after the run. As soon as I hit my apartment complex gate, I couldn’t walk. I stopped and had to do the awkward leg swing if I wanted to get to the door. A little stretching got me loose enough to walk, and everything felt progressively better throughout the day. The next day, I worked on my legs hard, and there was no pain at all throughout the day, so I went for a run that night. It came back partway through the run, but I discovered that turning my foot out at a slight angle made running painless, and so that’s what I did.

Armed with that information, I decided to do a VO2max workout to help prepare for the 5K I’m doing on December 17th. So I ran to the track with no issues, but I started tightening up in the second 800m rep. I stopped and stretched after every rep and made it through the whole workout. I was doing a little extra stretching before I ran back home. Then I heard a pop and felt pain in my knee and I knew that I wasn’t running home.

So here I am on the couch today. I did a lot of hip work last night and today. I’m feeling a lot better today after ice and stretching and ITBS recovery routines. No pain in the knee or IT band from bearing weight, no pain doing most of the recovery exercises, and maybe a 2/10 when trying to bend the knee or walk normally. I don’t know how long it’ll take to recover, though I hope it’s just a couple of weeks.

I hope I can get those extra 90 miles in for the year to hit 1500 miles and that I can run the 5k next month. I’d love to be able to do The Michigan on New Years Eve with the rest of the ARTC folks. I’d really like to get all of those done, but it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t. I probably wouldn’t be here if I had taken more time off after the race. I knew getting hurt was possible if I tried to run through the pain, and I did it anyway. Of course, I probably would have had less time off had I taken it earlier, too. Now all of the rest of my year’s goals are in jeopardy and the hindsight is really killing me here. So yeah, don’t run through pain.