IT band pain.
It's pretty common in runners. It's a tendon that runs along the outside of your leg and it gets tight for a lot of people.
For the past ten days I've had hip-flexor pain and for the past 18 months my Achilles tendinitis causes me to wake up stiff and hobbling every morning. All of this on my left leg and I know all of it is somehow connected. I'm trying to find a sports massage therapist here in town but I'm still waiting for who appears to be the only one to call me back.
So right now I'm running, swimming, and CrossFitting a lot and most of the time I am managing some kind of injury. Training with an injury means pain or discomfort on a pretty regular basis. And all of the information I find online tells me to rest. Rest your muscles. Rest your joints. Rest your tendons.
I just can't do this. I can't rest. Even on most of my 'rest days' I still go on long walks. I take rest days once or twice a week.
But resting to repair an injury or overuse issue is different than a regular rest day; they're not scheduled. Taking a rest day because I'm hurting is incredibly hard for me to do; it makes me feel like I'm missing valuable training.
But more than risking the loss of any progress, it makes me feel worried.
Worried that I will lose important gains or get slower or come back weak. As a heavier, slower athlete losing any speed puts me back at 12 minute miles when I've worked so hard to get to 11:20/mile speeds.
Mostly I worry that I'll gain weight. I've maintained a 50 pound weight loss for 5 1/2 years now and my total loss is around 75 lbs. I'm at my lowest weight since my senior year of high school and I look great in my jeans. I'm faster, stronger, and generally more awesome than ever before. Exercise is a big part of that success and maintenance. If I stop exercising, even for a few days or a week, I worry that the scale will move up ten pounds. I also use exercise to control my eating, meaning that I eat to support my workouts and avoid certain foods because they cause me to lift less or run slower, so if I stop exercising I find it a lot harder to resist pizza, burgers, and cake.
So essentially I'd rather be injured and in pretty constant discomfort than risk gaining some weight back. I believe that training for races and other events has been the thing that let me lose and maintain a weight loss. The idea of giving that up, even for a few days or a week, is really disconcerting. Shoot, actually it's really scary. I'm swimming more as a way of losing and maintaining my weight but I know in my heart I'm a runner and a CrossFitter. Swimming, while good, isn't as satisfying.
How do you deal with this? Is rest hard? In our world of busy-ness and where people glorify a packed calendar how do you make time to do something that might heal you but also might set you back?
