And then… not. I hopped on the trainer (yes, still) today and realized pretty quickly that it was one of those days. You all know what I’m talking about. The kind of day where you feel like you can go forever. An hour in, I felt like I’d just gotten on the bike. Everything was going great. Then, around the two hour mark, my left knee started aching, and not in any place I’d expect. It was on the antero-medial aspect of my tibia (front-middle of my shin) and definitely not in the joint at all. I was only able to make it another half hour before the pain was bad enough to make me stop. I tried to figure out exactly what in the hell could be hurting there, and came to the conclusion that it’s one of three muscles that attach at the pes anserinus: the sartorius, gracilis, or semitendinosus. Turns out, this makes perfect sense, seeing as all three are knee flexors, and the sartorius is a hip flexor. Yeah, normally those motions aren’t done much in cycling, since the joint extensors are the power muscles. But I’ve been riding with my Powercranks recently, so I’m definitely using the flexors a lot more than normal. I figure it’s either an acute flare-up of tendinitis or bursitis. I’m inclined to go with the latter, since isometric activation of the muscles doesn’t produce any pain; it only occurs during movement. I have a feeling that the bursa is inflamed, and during movement, the tight tendons rub across it, and that’s the source of my pain.

Hot damn, I knew I was going to school for something. I’ve iced it and I’ll take tomorrow easy, then pick back up on Monday – without the Powercranks. I might also head down to campus tomorrow for a little ultrasound, see if I can’t quiet it down with that.

Oh yeah, this probably should have gone at the beginning, but: PT nerd alert!