It finally happened. I've been meaning to see a physio for a while, as I've been getting a mild pain my left knee. His diagnosis: runner's knee. So on one hand, I'm pretty happy, as it means I'm now a runner! On the other hand, pain is bad. He said that since I've been running for the past 3 months despite the pain, it's probably not that serious, and it's likely that we've caught it early and can start some rehab.
The physio said that over the next week, I need to start doing some work with a foam roller to try and ease the muscles in my leg. Before he explained what it was, he looked at me and said, "It's unfortunate, because nothing I say will convince you to do this foam roller work. You're going to look at me and tell me you'll do it, but unlike someone who has to do the rehab because they can't run otherwise, you are unlucky in the sense that you can still run, so you'll probably go home and forget all about it."
I scoffed (am I becoming more arrogant lately? #midPlayerThings) and said that of course I was going to do it, because the last thing I want is to be too injured to run.
Then we went through the rehab exercise, which involves lying sideways on a foam roller so that it's perpendicular to me, and it's underneath my hip. Then rolling myself upwards so that the roller massages my outer thigh down to my knee and rolling myself down again.
I'd describe my knee pain as a 2. Tearing off a band-aid is a 3. This foam roller thing is a 7. So I can understand why people are generally really reluctant to want to do it. I'm supposed to do this 10 times on each leg, and then another 10 times per leg with my body tilted slightly forwards. After that, I go for my run, and then do another set of 10 / 10 per leg. I can make it through about 4 or 5 before tears start welling in my eyes. I haven't managed to do the prescribed 10 / 10 per side yet, I have to break it down into two sets of 3 and one set of 4. But I figure doing it slowly is going to be better than not doing it at all.
Still, after all of this, I'm starting to feel a lot more empathy for people who are reluctant to go through rehab. Even though I can see the long-term gain in my mind, the short-term pain is so intense and while I'm doing it, it's really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have managed to do it 3 times, and my 4th time is going to be tonight. I've been a bit too busy to go for another 10km run this week, but I'm hoping to see how I go tomorrow morning.
If I don't see an improvement, it's going to be even harder to motivate myself to keep going. My physio says that I'll get used to it. I asked if it was like Stockholm Syndrome and he said it's like a marriage - you grow to tolerate each other. I hope, unlike marriage, I don't have to keep doing this foam roller stuff for the rest of my life. If that's the case, I might give up running.
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