ITBS

IlioTibial Band Syndrome is, in my opinion, the worse sport related injury any athlete can face. To many, it is knows as having Runners Knee because it is the tightening of the the IT Band (from hip to knee) at its finest which can occur at any time one is active. For many years I have suffered from it and with every attempt short of surgery, tried to remedy the situation, which is not easy.
I haven't done any running for a few months due to the cold weather and not wanting slight flare ups to worsen. I have been swimming and riding much less than before and ready to pick up the pieces very soon. Yesterday in the pool, Coach JQ gave a great workout which had us doing drills, kicks and swimming of all drills. I managed through an IM order set fine and kept pressing on. We had to do a 200 kick of all of the strokes. We got to the breast stroke kick and I was good until 150 yards when I started to feel the knee act up. I pressed on and finished the set. Coach JQ had us doing some more drills and swimming which seemed doable until I got half way through. Not only was my knee screaming but the bottom of my foot was too. It hurt like crazy so I had to leave the pool ten minutes early.
 When I got home, I was really hoping the pain would subside after an hour or so because I wanted to go for a bike ride. That did not happen. I had to take two aspirin just to get comfortable enough to go to sleep. I was knocked out by 8:30. Yikes, I am old.
When I awoke this morning, I still felt pain. It was bad enough for me to carry around aspirin in my rucksack. Though I know it wasn't a good idea, I decided to go back to the pool shortly afterward. It was not the smartest idea but the swim is important to me and I wanted to do some sort of water movements to loosen it up. I made it through most of the practice but could not bob up and down like Coach KR asked us to. My knee and leg were in pain and tight all day that when I returned home, I had to use my TENS machine on the hurt areas. I turned it on high and my leg was convulsing like crazy because it is so tight. I will leave this machine on for as long as I possibly can to loosen it up so that I can use the foam roller and The Stick with ease. I hope to be able to go for a bike ride tomorrow.