Real Progress

I'm making real progress on the knee. Ever since we started focusing on the IT band at PT (and at home), it seems like my knee has made significant improvement every day.

This weekend was a pretty good test. I rode the trainer on Saturday since it rained most of the day. I did the bulk of the ride at a Zone 2 pace without any problems. On Sunday, I spent most of the morning cutting up the tree that fell in our backyard, and clearing out the vines and brush that fell with it. Immediately after that, I rode my mountain bike for a while over at Waterford Oaks. I probably rode harder than I should have, but my knee still felt OK on the bike. I noticed it felt a little tired after I stopped, but that feeling went away quickly.

I picked up a new book last week, The Knee Crisis Handbook. It hasn't been quite what I expected, but it's pretty decent. I just read through the section on stretching and made an interesting observation. Recall that I'd been working pretty hard over the Winter and early Spring on improving my flexibility. I saw that I'd been doing every stretch in the book, except one, the IT band stretch. I'd also been self-massaging most of the muscles acting on the knee, except the IT band. So, my new theory is that, by regularly stretching the other muscles acting on the knee, my IT band became relatively tight and started pulling my knee out of whack. I think that's why my knee has responded so quickly to the PT work to massage and stretch the IT band.