Ain't good for me.

As a result of my iliotibial band syndrome, I haven't been running this week.  At all.  But that doesn't mean I've been sitting on my butt at home!  On the contrary, I've been swimming instead!  

Thank goodness for cross-training workouts like swimming that allow me to continue to feel like I'm still training for this marathon instead of bowing out when injury strikes.  Not that I don't feel a little bit worthless right now; after all, there's still pain accompanying me when I walk, and I clearly won't be joining my team on the eight-mile group run this weekend.  

But that's okay.  Sometimes Fayza's gotta do what Fayza's gotta do to make it happen.

Swimming, mind you, is not all fun and games like I hoped and thought it would be.  No, um, swimming is quite difficult, actually!  The stamina I've built up through running most certainly doesn't translate directly into swimming endurance.  I'll do a lap and feel like I'm pretty close to dying, or internally combusting, at the very least.  But each day, I notice my stamina improving, and that's pretty remarkable in and of itself.

I'm not solely planning on swimming, however.  I'm going to swim today, but I may shoot for something different tomorrow.  But next week for sure, I'll be working some bikram yoga, spinning, and weight training back into my routine.  The yoga worries me because of all the sitting and stress on the knees (when your IT band is in pain, the smallest thing feels like a stress on the knees).  I went last Friday, and it did aggravate my knee, as I assumed it would.  What kinda sucks is that I just purchased ten bikram sessions, and I'm not sure if I'll have the time to use all of them with this injury before I move at the end of the month.

According to the sports medicine doctor I saw today, weight training and squats and things like that are a-okay, just as long as I keep my feet grounded and push through my heels, not the balls of my feet (pushing through the balls of the feet puts more pressure on the knees, as opposed to pushing through the heel, which engages the quads).

At any rate, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss running.  This marathon has come to symbolize so much more than I ever thought it would, and I am learning so much about myself in the process.  And I ache to get back out on the trail again.