Knee Story

So, I went to see a phyiscal therapist last week for my knee. I saw Clint Verran, who is also a serious runner and fast cyclist. I actually raced against him in cyclocross last year. I figured that he would "get it".

Anyway, like my doctor, after checking some other things, he also focused in pretty quickly on my meniscus. With two qualified people now telling me the same thing, I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that I have a meniscus tear. Given that I'm not having problems with the knee locking, giving out, etc, it seems like I shouldn't need surgery for it, so that's good.

I did some research on meniscus tears after I got home, trying to figure out how I might have done it. While mowing the lawn yesterday, I sort of pieced together how it might have all gone down.

Way back at the end of 2004, I remember going for a run in cold weather (maybe it was around Thanksgiving?). I probably hadn't been running for a while, and I doubt that I warmed up (that's sort of how I did things back then). I remember that my legs (calves?) eventually got really tight, and that I felt a little pop when I was stretching after I got home. Probably I was still cold while stretching. I remember some pain at the time, but I don't think it lasted long at all, so I sort of discounted it. I think that's probably when I tore it though. I also don't remember ever having knee problems before then. According to my limited training logs from that time, it looks like I struggled with some nagging pain off and on for about 4 months!

Over the next several years, I would occasionally have issues with my left knee, usually when I would try to do something out of the ordinary. I documented a few of them (Vail hike , MCB run). It seemed that I'd finally gotten rid of the issue when I tweaked my position on the bike a little, and I also started being more careful about building up to unusual (for me) activities (like hiking at Yosemite last year).

Fast forward to the Spring of 2010. I'd been working hard on improving my flexibility and eliminating muscle imbalances, and it had been a long time since I'd had left knee issues, which I'd come to call "bad old days" pain. I'd become a little less cautious about protecting my left knee. So, as I'm increasing intensity lifting weights, and adding volume on the bike (there's probably at least a minor training error in there), I also added a new flexibility exercise. This exercise called for assuming a deep squat position with feet straight ahead; knees a little wide because the arms were touching the floor in front...

If you look up typical causes for meniscus tears, you usually find something like: "knee joint is bent while the knee is twisted". Pretty much exactly what I was doing. Probably (I hope) I didn't introduce a new tear, since I didn't feel any pain while doing it, but I think that's the culprit for this re-aggravation. I ran this by Clint and he agreed that it could have caused my problem.

The bad news is, based on my past experience and my current rate of progress, I may still be out of commission for a while. But I think the good news is that I've done this before and I have recovered before, so I feel like I can do it again. Now that I know (and accept) what is wrong, I think I can probably successfully work around it once I'm recovered.