I woke up on Tuesday morning with a 4 mile run pencilled in on my schedule. Began to clamber out of bed, and was immediately aware of a sharp pain in my left knee. So bad that I couldn’t bend it.
Eventually I eased my way onto my feet and limped towards the stairs. Getting down them was quite a struggle. I couldn’t put any weight at all on my left knee, so had to sort of hop down, one step at a time.
Fast forward 3 days, to today. The simple truth is that it’s still really bad. I can now get up and down the stairs much more easily, but I think this is more to do with having developed an effective technique, rather than an improvement in the underlying problem.
I’m at a loss to know what’s happened here. I’ve never had trouble with knees. Calf muscles, yep, and both big toes have tormented me from time to time. But the bigger joints — ankles and knees — have been kind to me. So I can’t understand what’s going on. Last week, I did step into a hole while out with the running club, but apart from some temporary discomfort with my left ankle, there seemed to be no lasting problem, and certainly nothing knee-ational.
Looking at it now, there’s no swelling, no discolouration, just a sharp pain when I press the knee-cap, or when I bend the joint more than a few inches.
Hmmm. No running, needless to say, and just about zero chance of doing the Burnham Beeches Half on Sunday.
I’m puzzled rather than gloomy about it.
