In early March I wrote about an 'injury' that has plagued me for many months - since middle August 2020 to be exact. I've been seeing a biokineticist since February. Our focus has been on balancing muscle strength between left and right and also various muscle groups. My assessment in late March showed marked improvement. In April, Megan got me on a treadmill to check posture, foot strike, alignment - all ok.
I've only been trotting and walking on trails with the dogs these past months. I haven't been in pain, but I haven't been 'normal' either. Some right-knee stiffness here and there (even just from sitting or sleeping) - it is a general always-there awareness that my right knee exists.
I've been doing well and so two weeks ago I joined the George Trail Running Monday Social group for their 8km run - in the dark, by headlamp. I felt a bit skittish as I'm terrified of tripping and falling and setting myself back months again. The terrain and route were familiar to me and I took it easy and felt good. The next morning I was overjoyed to suffer no ill effects of the run.
A few days after this - perhaps from one of the strength exercises I'm doing - I felt quite niggly again.
And then, a week ago, I woke up in the morning feeling nothing (which is a great thing). And this whole week I've felt nothing. I even spent a chunk of time placing rubber flooring mats, hammering, trimming, cleaning - and still nothing.
I'd spoken to Megan about trying a bit of road running, which I haven't done at all for the past 10 months! Four weeks ago she said I should give it a shot. Start off small - just around the block - and see how it goes, increasing from there.
Well, I've been too chicken to try, especially as I had not been totally niggle-free, which would bring in too many variables as I'm trying to isolate what keeps poking the bear.
After a week of feeling nothing, nada, zilch, I decided to give a short road run a try this evening. I began on a mostly flat stretch of road with a nice wide cycle/pedestrian path. I ran easy 1km down and 1km back up again. To my surprise I was clocking 5:30/km. I didn't expect that because I wasn't pushing very hard.
I felt nothing in my knee while running - a great place to be. I added a loop within the nearby suburb to make it a 20 min run and then enjoyed a nice 10-minute walk to get back home. I hope to wake up in the morning feeling as good as I do right now.
I've got a bio assessment on Tuesday. We've got an hour session booked with treadmill (we do video side and back of me running - also to compare to previous videos) and other assessment elements included to see where I am.
I have no doubt that this assessment will set new positive scores and it will prove yet another benchmark to better.
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