it was definitely the ham, egg, & cheese croissant sandwich...

for some odd reason, after taking 10 days off to be sick and recover, the day i started running again i had sharp, debilitating knee pain like i hadn't had in years.  i knew exactly what it was--itbs, or runner's knee.  it's when the IT band, a ligament that goes from your outer hip, runs the length of your femur, and attaches at the upper outer part of your knee, tightens, and inflames at the knee, causing the pain.  it feels like with each step the cushiony pads between your joints have disappeared, and it's bone on bone.  no bueno.  

my first run was last friday, and i really wanted to get back on track with my training schedule, so i thought i'd do an easy 5 miles.  the last two miles were painful and slow.  i stretched and rolled, and thought i just needed time to limber up, and i'd try again the next day.  last saturday, halfway through my run, i had to stop and call david to come pick me up.  most.  embarrassing.  moment.  why my IT bands were tight after having 10 days of rest and doing absolutely nothing was beyond me...and very, very frustrating.

so i just spent the last week in "active recovery".  i took four more full days off from running--again--not so good in the face of a looming event 8 weeks away.  i wanted to do a bootcamp recovery--get over this thing FAST.  i knew the issue was the need to restrengthen my core and stabilizing muscles, while also giving my knees a rest, so last week i did

• 3 kickboxing sessions
• 2 shred sessions
• 2 yoga sessions
• 4000mg of ibuprofen, over the course of 5 days...
• ice during the day
• epsom salt soaks at night
• stretches and foam rolls every day

and i returned to running on friday with i think a 3-4 mile jog, wearing my stiff trail running shoes for extra stability.  i could tell my knees were getting a little tweaky towards the end, but not worse than tweaky, so that was a good sign in my mind.  enough to go for a 5 mile run on saturday.  i loaded up on another 800mg of ibuprofen before hitting the road and a little over an hour finished my run.  again, slow (i normally run 7 miles in the same amount of time), but no real pain, just the kind you know the ibuprofen is taking the edge off...i doubt my knees are totally recovered, but i'd say i'm well enough that i will take it slow during the weeks and keep upping my mileage on saturdays...i only have 6 more long runs left!  kind of daunting!  

so how did my bootcamp recovery go so smoothly?!  sometimes runner's knee can take up to a month+ to recover...looking back over the week, i normally do kickboxing, shred, and yoga with runs before or after the workout, so that wasn't really any different.  ice and epsom salt are a runner's bff, so they weren't super out of the ordinary, i was just more conscientiously consistent about it.  that was a bit more ibuprofen than i normally take...about 4000 times more...and then the roller and stretching is a necessity...so, what was the trick?  and then i remembered.  we went out to kneader's for a fun breakfast saturday morning.  i had a hot chocolate with whipped cream and a ham, egg, & cheese croissant sandwich.  that was the trick.  croissants always make life better.

so next time you have some knee pain?--go get a croissant sandwich at kneaders...