What the heck are you doing?

Unfortunately, it seems a whole bunch of triathletes are facing ITBS (am I the only weirdo who reads that IrriTable Bowel Syndrome?) and have equally angry illiotibial bands, attachments, fascia, knees, etc. If you are not facing an IT band injury, you should probably leave now. Or scroll down and read about kaizen. It's bad juju to read about ITBS if you don't have it. But for those commiserating, here's what is working for me.

#1 is probably the most important but also the lamest thing I've done is the resting. I hate the resting. Yet I did it for almost 6 weeks now and am finally seeing improvement. 4.5 weeks in I could ride my bike again, and now I am starting to run short distances (non-distances) on it without pain. The rest was unavoidable after Arizona, it hurt too much to even consider cheating. 

#2 is only slightly more fun than the resting. It's the rolling. On the Trigger Point rolling pin thing with skater wheels, better described here: Quadballer I was able to spend some time with Cassidy, it's creator, in Arizona and he demonstrated the best way to use it on a piece of crap IT band like mine.

#3 is Jaco. Light years more fun than the resting and the rolling! Jaco Van Delden Physical Rehab is my life saver. He got me to two Konas injury-free. The guy is wicked smaht, and freaking hilarious. So not only am I being treated and learning about the injury, I am laughing. Jaco and I have been hanging out once or twice a week. He sometimes tries to kill me by sticking his elbows in my biggest, sore-est, rear-est muscles, and I scream at him, but I leave feeling better every time. He has a pretty killer new website too.

#4 is the pull buoy. I'm swimming tons. Which is about 1/4 the total volume of an actual swimmer. I do at least half of it with a pull buoy so that the lame leg is still resting, and am careful not to push off the wall very hard. Coach Paul swears that hard swimming will make the running come back faster when it's time, and in my very slow return to cycling, it seems he was right. The fitness isn't totally gone.

#5 is ART. No, I'm not taking out my anger on canvas Pollack-style. ART is for Active Response Technique Therapy that Tanya Castro at Peak Performance is providing to help stretch me out and un-stick my evil fascia from my quad. ART comes highly recommended from many triathletes who say it saved them from ITBS, and it certainly seems to be helping me.

I am getting in some real workouts now, ones that don't involve ridiculously short rest intervals (what is it with swimming and the tiny intervals?) or rubber caps! I am not my old runner self by any means, but in the past three weeks I've worked up from 5 to 13 hours of training - which I'll top off with a swim/bike/something (probably involving holding a daquiri while screaming at my running friends suffering in the Kona heat) this weekend at Hawaii 70.3.