Generally caused by muscle imbalance (weaker quads), often seen in runners, often seen early in the training season. Apparently the v-shaped underside of the patella rubs wrong against the femoral groove and the whole mess of cartilage gets inflamed. He said it's something I've probably had for a while (I sometimes get similar knee pain after a long ride, just never this severe or long-lasting) and my little step-ladder incident happened to tweak it just right to cause an acute flare-up.
I've gotta take anti-inflammatories for a while, not do anything that loads the knee-cap (squatting, lunging, stair-climbing). I am allowed to walk as long as I go easy and the pain doesn't return in force. We chatted about the swimming - I couldn't figure out how that caused it to hurt - and figured out that pushing off the wall was the problem. (So I can swim as long as I don't push off the wall during turns?!?)
Once again I was glad my doctor's also an endurance athlete (marathoner). He's had this before, he took it seriously, he took the time to really talk to me about how to handle an active recovery and gave me advice on how to prevent flare-ups in the future.
I'm happy. I've got a name for it, info on how to treat and prevent it... and I just keep thinking that Robo-Stu is right, and it's freaking awesome: normal people don't have these problems.
2 comments:
I have to deal with this off and on during my training..I've found that cycling actually aggravates it more than running..sometimes if you cleat float is tight, it can irritate my knees too..be careful!!
Oh you poor thing...if someone told me I had to do squats to get better I'd hang myself...
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