IT Band Starts To Play

My father likes to say something like this: "I was perfectly healthy until I went to the doctor and then suddenly I had all these problems."

I went to Dr Gennaro because of the pain in my quad that was preventing me from running. I have never, ever been more thoroughly examined. He checked things and measured things that I didn't even know mattered.

He discovered that I had bursitis in my hip and IT Band irritation. He kept asking me if my right knee bothered me. It never did. When he or Heather touched the IT Band, it was tender, but my knee never bothered me while running. It was my right quad all the time.

So, here I am, somewhere on the Willis Avenue Bridge and my right knee starts to talk to me. My quad was already on the verge of yelling but that was a conversation I was accustom to. It was not a shock or jarring. When the right knee decided it wanted to talk, I was "You wanna talk now?" "Really?!"

When we hit the decline of the bridge, both the quad and knee were yelling and yelling loudly. I was in tough shape. They quieted to an 'outside talking voice' once we were on level ground.

Somewhere around this time, Danielle had to use the PortaJohn. I was running alone. Then..... there is Michelle, Kyle and Melissa and Melissa jumped in to run with me. She is training for the Vegas Half-Marathon in December. It was so perfect for me. Once she jumped in, my knee and even my quad shut up. I mean, not one peep out of them. She loved that people were calling me by name - I gotta say that continued to be very cool - she talked about how she enjoyed this blog and other things. She was a joy to run with and she made my injuries shut up for a mile or so.

At some point after Melissa peeled off, Danielle caught up to me. It was like the angels came down from above and started that harp music and all was right with the world.

That is until somewhere, I do not know for sure where, a red hot knife came out of no where and stabbed me in the right knee. I almost fell over, it hurt so badly. I stopped running and it was all I could do to keep moving forward, some how. Danielle was gone and I was all by myself with my knee not playing fair and somewhere around 2 miles to go.