Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Whining

In my post about le Tour I mentioned that I started riding myself a few years ago. Back then, I was a fairly serious recreational cyclist...I was slow and on a inexpensive hybrid, but on a typical weekend I'd ride a total of about a hundred miles. (Not in one day. I never made it to the century mark; my longest ride was 83.)

I also started having excrutiating, then debilitating, pain in my knees. The eventual diagnosis was chondromalacia patellae, which I have since seen referred to as patellofemoral stress syndrome, a condition where the misaligned kneecap rubs on the femur. It can grind away at the cartilage, which happened to me, and I ended up having arthroscopic surgey.

For awhile I was good about doing physical therapy, going to the gym, and I still rode. Then other things in life started eating away at ride time, and gym time, and then I just got lazy. Since I wasn't riding, my knees only bothered me when the weather was changing (they were quite the barometer: I woke up from a sound sleep one winter night with my knee throbbing. The next morning we had several inches of unforecasted snow from a surprise front that had moved in) or if I sat too long with my knees bent, like at a hockey game.

Yesterday I decided to go riding. Tour inspired? Maybe. I have a road bike now, a nicer more expensive bike, and it doesn't do the machine justice to be hanging on the wall rack like pop art. I pumped up the tires and took it up to the local park. I won't even say how slowly or how short the ride was...sufice to say, back in my real riding days it would not have warranted putting on bike shorts and gloves. I was ashamed at how far my cardio fitness has fallen...I was panting up hills...but it was nice to be back on the bike.

Fast forward to today at work. I was sitting at my desk, probably twenty six hours since returning the bike to its wall rack, and suddenly there was a sharp repeating pain under my left kneecap. Honestly, it was so sudden and so bad that I swore out loud in surprise. I keep naproxen in my desk, and after about 20 minutes the sharp hammering pain was back to an ache. Then a few hours later, while I was walking down the flat hallway, the left knee just buckled. Thank God I wasn't carrying a cup of hot coffee.

Damn. I guess I am in worse shape than I thought, and I guess the orthopedist wasn't blowing smoke back when he advised me to keep up the PT "forever."

So tonight I'm sitting here with ice on my knee (deja vu) while I watch the Tour rebroadcast. And I feel very very wimpy, especially seeing Joseba Beloki's awful crash, which ended his race and landed him in the hospital with at least a broken leg, possibly a broken elbow as well.

Tomorrow I will start the leg lifts.

Posted by Nic at July 14, 2003 08:06 PM