Greetings to all fellow cyclists,
I just signed up, i need advice for an injury i seem to have caused to my left knee.
First of all i have to say i'm fairly new to cycling, i started up a year and a half ago, cycling gradually from 20km up to 120km.
I took up cycling as a way to lose some weight and soon came to love it.
I'm 1.76, 70kg by the way.
A month ago i started training for a second long distance trip, i planned and completed an 80km distance on Wednesday and then had the rest of the days up until Monday for rest (excluding a 15km easy ride on Saturday).
On Monday, after about 10km i started to have a minor pain on the exterior right side of the patela which gradually got worse over the trip. I didn't had any problem completing it but i have to say it did make me feel uncomfortable for most of the trip.
After this trip i took some time to let my knee recover a bit. I made myself take a miserable week and a half away from the saddle. After this time, on the first trip after 2 full weeks from the trip, i got on the bike but i had a weird feeling on my knee, like it wasn't sliding ok, like it had some more friction than normal. Anyway, after warming up for 5kms i had just a minor pain like the one on the trip but it gradually got worse up until 30kms later when it was very distinct and really painful. Needless to say, i took some more time off for recovery.
Last Wednesday i got on the saddle again and rode 32km... I warmed up pretty good but once again after the first 10km up to the first twenties the pain gradually got worse by a fair amount. By the time i got back home 10kms later, the pain was pretty severe. Not at the point i couldn't keep pedaling but it did become irritating.
The following day after i woke up i had a feeling my left knee was hotter than my right, i took the temperature from both of them and it turned out i was right, the had 1,5C difference! I took some time to search this and i put some ice on the knee for some time, i also tripled the dose of the flax seed oil supplements i had been taking and added a couple of chondroitin MSM and Glucosamine pills i had been taking from time to time. I gave it some rest up until today. I had a feeling it was really better in those last two days rest than the previews almost two week rest.
And i was right! i completed about 17kms with the first 5 warming up and the rest very active (i hit some hills, i didn't touched the saddle a lot) and by the time i got back home i didn't had any pain, just a feeling that my knee wasn't completely ok.
This pain probably only comes up with the pedaling motion. I didn't really try running all this time in fear it could get much worse, but i tried taking the stairs, running and pushing the knee to see how it will react to pressure and it did pretty well.
I also tried changing my saddle height and alignment a couple of times but it didn't make much of a change.
I didn't had any problems the last year, and i used to cycle 50-60km during the night, with really cold temperatures....
I'm always stretching with the slightest chance.
I never had any collision injuries or any other knee problems...
I hadn't been jogging lately (last time i went jogging was on July).
I'm really thankful to anyone who read my post and I'm really looking forward for replies... I wan't to get back to the saddle and cycle like the old times as soon as possible 😄