Well....the answer is, not a whole lot of anything.
Two days after my bike ride, I woke up to do my usual 5 mile run. Felt fine, great even. Got in the car, went to work, got back in the car...drove home. Stood up to get out of the car....ouch. The top of my right knee cap hurt so badly, I could barely stand up!
Clearly, it was time for lots of ice, stretching...and resting.
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The good news is that my knee was set off by the biking, not the running. The bad news is...now I don't know how to handle cross training on the bike! I really can't afford to take time off again, especially as I get deeper and deeper into the marathon training. But I don't want to give up on the bike, either! I've been having so much fun with it, it's great cross training...and there's the whole Olympic-triathlon-on-the-horizon-for-next-year thing as well. Sigh.
Have any of you experienced any setbacks? How have you handled them?
My knee knocked me out of running for about a year shortly after I moved to NY (and started running a lot more hills than I had in Chicago). In that case, my knee started hurting about 4 miles into a 9 mile run, and I went ahead and finished the run. Don't do that. More recently I've found that the knee might start hurting on the third mile of a run, but if I stop and walk home and take the next day off, I can often resume training as normal two days after my knee issued its complaint.
ReplyDeleteThis far out, it's definitely better to take a week off than to push it and turn it into months. If you have access to an elliptical machine, that's good cross-training that puts almost no strain on your knees. Walking seems to strengthen knees more than it hurts them. (Complete rest for more than a few days is usually counterproductive, depending on how bad the injury is; you want to strengthen it without antagonizing it.)
I don't know why I thought you were currently tri training? If it's not until next year, you'll be fine. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky that I've never experienced any major setbacks, considering that I don't do any cross training. I feel lucky that I intuitively know my own limits, though it makes me sucky at giving advice when asked!
I had a running-related IT band injury recently. I stopped running and got PT for a whole month. It's annoying but it was okay. The key is that you do not want to exacerbate an injury to the point where the injury will become irreparable.
ReplyDeletei am glad it sounds like your set backs are going better than mine. right now i am having sooo much trouble with finding sneakers which is problematic in terms of being able to run, i wish i was handling it better, it has been very hard and frustrating
ReplyDeleteI have plantar fasciitis, I switched shoes and that seemed to improve it, but I do give myself more rest days when my foot is just not feeling well.
ReplyDeleteHow did you hurt your knee on your bike? Maybe you need to raise your seat. I'm not a cyclist, but my spin instructor told us that if our seats were too low, we would be putting a lot of pressure on our knees. If you figure out what about the bike is aggravating your knee, then perhaps you can change that up and continue biking. An alternative would be to just work on the swim leg a little more for now and cut back on the cycling.
Good luck.
Last year I had planter fasciitis, I took three weeks and then eased into it. Saturday my left knee became very swollen and painful si I have been doing RICE and it is feeling better, just hoping I get to do my half marathon this weekend.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about starting to bike for cross training that makes me a little more hesitant!
It sounds like you might not be properly fitted for your bike. Did you buy your bike from a store? You can go back and tell them your problem. One of the technicians can make a minor adjustment to the bike to help you out. It's probably the seat height.
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