An Ace bandage is becoming my new best friend.
I’ve been using it to wrap my knee when I run. The snug brown gauze gives my leg enough support that my knee doesn’t start hurting. Last Saturday, I was able to run eight five-minute increments without pain — at least not in my knee.
But somehow I managed to injure my inner thigh muscle on the same leg. It’s a pain I felt occasionally last summer while cycling, but it always went away. Now, it’s back and getting worse.
If I tightly wrap the bandage around my upper thigh when biking, it doesn’t hurt — which I found during a ride before work Friday morning.
But during my Saturday run, my inner thigh starting hurting during the last 10 minutes. This was new, but since my knee didn’t hurt, I ignored the thigh pain and finished.
Bad move.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find my leg aching, and I was still in pain in the morning. While swimming Sunday morning (I know what you’re thinking. We’ll get to that shortly) it hurt only a little, until it came time to just kick — no arms. I could not flutter kick (the most common kick) without excruciating pain, so I stopped and switched to other types of kicks. Lifting my leg afterward was a test of courage.
But in the afternoon, as the sun peeked out behind the clouds, I strapped on my magical Ace bandage, hopped on my bicycle and rode for 30 minutes without pain.
Back to what I know you’re thinking: Have I mentioned that I don’t rest particularly well?
I can tell any one of my fellow swim team members not to swim — or bike or run — through pain, but I tend to ignore my own advice.
The Great Chesapeake Bay Swim is June 13, followed by the D.C. Triathlon June 20, and I feel I can’t afford to take any time off.
My brain tell me this attitude is incredibly stupid, but guts and grit have a mind of their own.
Case in point: I recently swam at the new Wilson High School pool for my Bay Swim training, taking advantage of the 50-meter pool (twice as long as the other indoor pools in the area) and a rare night of finishing work early.
My shoulder hurt from the beginning. I still don’t know why, though I guess it was still tired from some very hard training the weekend before. Still, I swam through the pain. My reasoning: I paid $4 to swim, I was there to get in a good long-distance practice, and I was going to do it. Period.
Unfortunately, I paid a greater price — my shoulder alternately burned and ached for the next two days. I tried ice, as well as my twice-a-day stretching (ask my female co-workers about my stretching in the bathroom) in hopes of getting back to swimming hard quickly. The next day, I had to kick for the entire practice — my inner thigh was not yet hurting– using my arms only occasionally. Yes, I could have taken the night off from the pool, but I had to get my yardage in. The Bay Swim approaches.
I was telling a swim coach about my shoulder a couple days later. As I was recounting how my shoulder hurt during the entire Wilson swim, including during warm-up, he said: “You shouldn’t do that. You could have long-term damage.”
“I know that,” I replied. “But …”
Actually, the rational part of me knows I have to be careful, especially now. I can’t afford any sort of pain in my shoulder if I’m going to make it across the 4.4 miles of the Bay. I remember all too well the pain I felt with every stroke after I passed the third mile last year.
Now, if the Ace people would only invent a full-body, waterproof bandage.
