Knee trouble (and a good speed session)

20M - double; speed & recovery
14M am speed; 24x400m as fartlek with 2M warm up and warm down
6M pm recovery run at ~6.15min/M

This was a bad day overall. I have pain on the outside of my left knee because of something called 'ilio-tibial band syndrome'. I had it on the other knee when I started running properly 2 years ago. It went away then with some rest and stretching, but it's an irritation to say the least. It's caused by the tendon from the muscle running down the outside of your thigh getting irritated by repeated rubbing on bones at your knee.

It came on at the end of what was a very good speed session. I ran my 24x400m reps as a fartlek run over the loop the race will be on on Sunday. It was easy because there are distance markers every 400m. It was pretty hot, but I maintained my top speeds of 65-70s per rep all the way through. My Garmin tells me my peak pulses were 175bpm. My trough pulse at the end of a slow 400m was ~125bpm.

The pain came on in a slow patch in the last mile and persisted as I ran slowly home. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone out on my evening run - when it was worse - but I wanted to know how bad things were...

I'll rest tomorrow, stretch and try to calm the inflammation with regular ibuprofen.