Hurting and healing
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009“…medicine is totally trial and error. And it is really time consuming trial and error because the body can take a long time to respond and long time to heal.” –a friend with medical problems far more serious than mine
I’ve been struggling since December with a round of Iliotibial Band Syndrome, or ITBS. It’s a well-known problem for runners at all levels (when I wrote a column about my last bout, six years ago, I got a sympathetic email from Craig Masback) and because the fundamental problem is tightness and inflammation, it takes a long time to go away.
After a winter of self-pity, weight gain, and runs of 20 to 30 minutes, I adopted a ritual of stretching and stability exercises which allowed me to extend out to about an hour pain-free–sometimes. That’s been in place for about a month and a half and I seemed to have reached a recovery plateau.
We have a theory here that some really stubborn injuries will only go away when faced with another injury. My last round of ITBS tagged off to plantar fasciitis (another familiar running ailment). I’ve retreated to the pool and resolved my running injuries by incurring overuse swimming injuries. I’ve known people whose running pains went away after they went skiing and broke an arm.
Sunday, I was on a trail run with a small group of dedicated psychotics. After a moderate “out” leg, we returned at a pretty brisk pace, and along the way I hooked a toe on one of the trail’s duckboards and went down hard among some roots. The bad part, I told them later, wasn’t the fall; it was the bounce and the slide which followed. I got up, caught my breath, inventoried all mission-critical parts and found them functioning, and we finished the run.
The total haul included some minor abrasions on my right hand and right quad, a more dramatic-looking scrape along the lower part of my breastbone, and another scrape and some very vivid bruises on my left forearm. 48 hours later, the scrapes are fading, but Sunday afternoon I was wondering if I had cracked a rib.
I’ve also done three runs totaling about 2:40 since then, and haven’t had even a tiny twinge of pain from the ITBS.