Grrrrrrrr for inflamed IT bands

Well, my knee and I are currently in severe disagreement with each other. I am of the opinion that on February 18th, I am going to be running 26.2 in the Austin Marathon. My knee has very poor manners and is prone to throwing tantrums in the form of inflamed tissue and searing pain up the side of me leg.

Now, I have tried to reason with with my left IT band. I have massauged it's feelings, I have iced and coddled it for 20 min. 3X a day. I have ingested large quantities of anti-inflammatories in the hopes that some sort of an arrangement could be reached. Not to mention my elongated stretching sessions, from which every other part of my body EXCEPT my knee has become loose and limber as a result of. Or the scary needle incident which was supposed to help, but didn't.

Alas, my knee is one stubborn son*of*a*. I wonder where it gets it from.

Did I mention I have 20 miles on my training schedule tomorrow?

I have been a little depressed about this, as I have succeeded in getting into the best shape of my life, exceeding my fundraising goal, and now will possibly fall short because a stupid band that won't behave itself and work properly.

The reason for all of this seems to be a result of my scoliosis/spinal rotation and subsequent surgery which basicly fused my spine into a set arrangement that = one of my legs being significantly closer to the ground than the other, which makes one leg have a lot more stress than the other, which has resulted in the aforementioned tantrum-throwing knee. It was interesting, when I was looking at my shoes with my physical therapist/coach, that one of my shoes had almost no sole worn away, and the other hardly had any left.

It's interesting how the body can compensate for something you didn't even know was wrong with you until you try to do something you've never done before.

Anyhow, it looks like I probably won't run the whole thing- I'll probably have to walk some of it, and it will take me a lot longer than I was aiming for. I realize it is somewhat of an arbitrary goal- that maybe my body just needs more time and will be ready in a few months from now if I just eased up on myself. It's just so frustrating to set a goal, put the work in, do everything right, and be held back because of some assinine physical barrier. On the other hand, maybe I'm supposed to learn something from all of this that will give me greater understanding of.....something.

I'm going to see how tomorrow's 20 miles go and guage what I should do about the race from that.