I hate ITB.
For the uninitiated ITB is not the name of a department of home affairs form but a sport injury. Its full name is Iliotibial Band Syndrome and in some ways it is a lot worse than dealing with a government department.
ITB is a little like those relatives, the ones you try not to admit are yours. Like them it turns up, uninvited and out of the blue, and then refuses to leave. And, like them, it has good days, so good that you plan a road trip. And then you hit the road and just a couple of kilometers in you realise the scale of your mistake. This is not going to end well.
You limp home with a brave face.
ITB is generally an injury associated with running although I’ve previously had ITB while cycling. In most cases it is brought on by over training, though I swear this time I wasn’t overdoing it, and it can also be brought on by the camber in the road or the shoes you run in. Its two most marked characteristics are that it appears out of nowhere — one day you’re running happily, the next you’re limping — and although the pain goes away when you’re not running it reappears soon after you start again.
I confess that I’ve self-diagnosed my current injury as ITB but I’ve suffered enough at its hands to make my diagnosis slightly better than a stab in the dark.
For weeks I’d been running around 30km a week and enjoying it. I wasn’t pushing hard, trying to run fast or doing anything extreme. I put in a couple of weeks with longs runs of more than 10km. And on January 1 I did my longest run of the year at 15km 
. I muddled on for the next couple of weeks at around 30-34km a week and on the 15th January I did another 15km run. A long, slow 15km which I felt completely comfortable with. Monday was a swim day so no running. Tuesday I went out for a gentle 6km run and three kilometres in I felt the pain. Having done this before I walked home and took the week off.
I’ve run twice this week and in both cases I made about 3km before the pain started. What’s most frustrating is that until the pain in the knee starts I feel like I could run a marathon. Then I’m forced to walk home.
From experience the only sure cure is rest. Weeks of it. The problem with that is that when you do restart running in a month’s time you’re back to square one, or pretty close to it.
The alternative is to push on a little, do a serious amount of stretching and perhaps even spend some time with a physiotherapist. I’ve opted for this route. I plan to run every other day, mostly short runs that I can cut even shorter if (or when) the pain reappears. I haven’t quite got to the physio stage yet but I’m giving it a week before I make a decision on that.
There is a silver lining to this cloud, I suppose. Next month I am swimming in the Midmar Mile for the second time in my life. Fortunately swimming is one of the few exercises that I can do without worsening my ITB. If anything I suspect swimming actually helps ITB though I have no actual evidence for this. So while I can’t be out running I’m getting in a decent amount of swimming.
