If you think you can just ignore the pain...

From: (David Monti)

(Anne Truitt) writes:

I've been an ITB sufferer since December, 1993. I ran and cycled through it in the early stages, and did a successful marathon in March. I continued to train hard through June, and I just couldn't take the pain anymore. One of the complications can be nerve damage. I lost the feeling in my two middle toes, my lower leg tingled, and the stiffness in the tendon became extreme. I was icing it like crazy, but that ended up accelerating thenerve damage on the superficial pernoeal nerve.

I've been off of training for 60 days, and it is still not healed. Lots of Dr. and P/T visits, too. It's just going to take some time...

ITB syndrome can be extremely debilitating. I urge you to take care of it immediately. I trained with it for about 6 months, developed scar tissue and now have nerve adhesions on my commom peroneal and superficial peroneal nerves. Two months of PT, heat and anti-inflamatory medication have helped, but I'm a long way from well. I can't run at all and can only bike gently 3 times a week.

To have a surgeon clean up the adhesions would, according to my doctor, require a 8" incision so that he could "follow the nerve" and remove all of the scar tissue.
BTW, cycling can aggrevate, too. I really burned the tendon badly in a Winter biathlon by biking hard while my legs were still in the "weak winter" stage. Good luck on the healing ;-).