After a couple of years of consistent running and getting a bit obsessive about it and falling into the trap of speed worship, I have hit a wall injuring my Iliotibial Band(ITB). After running a 25K at the last Bangalore Ultra 2008 and running 20Ks around 2:30, I felt I need to improve the timings and joined a training, a new initiative in Bangalore, Runners High. While the training looked good, I had many indicators that told me to slow down, but I didn't. The first signs were the chronic neck sprains and one of them was during one of the speed work. Speedwork is prone to push your body and the loose ends show up. But that didn't stop me from my drive towards an under 2:30 half marathon. Since I was doing the run-walk on my long runs, I was pretty confident that injuries can't catch up with me that easily. So everything was looking good till 15K runs, where I could finish pretty strongly with a 3:1 splits. In fact I was unhappy that they weren't doing long runs. One of those 16K runs, I missed the end turnaround point and ended up doing an 18K instead, but it turned out to be a troublesome one with the knee. I wasn't too worried because I hadn't run that distance for a long time. But the next week things turned a bit worrisome when I couldn't finish a 18K run. Started doing the stretches regularly and added some strength training. Things improved a bit before the KTM, but a poorly paced run at KTM seems to have aggravated the ITB. Since then I have been struggling to run a 10K, a slow 12K left me down with significant knee joint pain that persisted for couple of days. So it was time to listen to the body finally and take some rest and rejuvenate the body.
I also was cycling to work most of the days which added to the workload and the labor at the garden also added up.
Tyring to improve the timings was a bad idea instead of trying to run more distance gradually. The running time predictors told me that I could do a 2:20 half marathon and the fact that I could do a 2h30 20K in Jan 09 made me work towards a better time. The 10K training was going on well except for the neck sprains, I couldn't run the 10K being stuck with a flu. And the flus didn't trouble me for the half marathon training. But not slowing down for the hot climate and attempting a PB at KTM was a very stupid thing in retrospect. And being addicted to running, it was difficult to back off easily. And the problem with ITB is that it comes on only during running, which makes it tough to make a call not to run.
So I am going through a runners' low and going through a physiotherapy session to get things back to shape soon! The ITB looks better after couple of sessions, but it appears that the weak ITB has caused some swelling under the patella, which is kind of painful during therapy.
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