Recovering from Dirty Kanza

In which I rediscover why it's a good idea to train for big events.

Did I mention that my knee started hurting about 30 miles into my Dirty Kanza attempt? The pain started as tightness behind my left knee. It eventually wrapped around to the front of my knee and gave me a little stab with every pedal stroke. I don't remember any pain there during the next few days with normal walking and activity. But now the pain reoccurs on every single bike ride, including short and easy commutes, and sticks around for a bit after the ride.

This seems obvious and stupid to say, but this is why you need to train for huge events. Your fitness may be able to carry you through stupid-hard events (like the Dirty Kanza, or remember that Cedar Point half ironman that I did on basically no training?), but your muscles and tendons and mind need the practice, too. So yeah. Next time I'll actually train for the event.

Something in here is going wrong. By the way, this isn't my actual knee.

In the meantime, I need to make my knee better! And I'm finding that I'm strangely lazy about resolving my own biomechanical issues. I'm a personal trainer and a physical therapy student, right? So I should be able to put together a basic knee rehab routine for my own benefit. If a client came in with this problem, I'd have half a dozen exercises in mind to help make it better. For some reason, when it's my own knee, I can't muster the focus necessary to come up with a plan.

That said, my bum shoulder has also been bothering me for weeks. I think it's down to a less-than-ergonomic set-up at my home desktop computer. Anyway, it's painful, it hurts when I move it, and it hasn't been getting better (even with consistent exercise). So I've set up an appointment with a physical therapist.

Healer, heal yourself much?