docjoe

Thanks for your patience in advance if you read through this!


I thought I would throw this out to the peanut gallery to get differing opinions on my right knee pain.

For background, I recently got back into biking over the past 2 months, after doing a lot of running since the first of the year (training for a half Marathon). I have been riding 20-40 mile rides 3 times a week (mostly 30 milers) over the past 2 months. The transition to cycling from running was much better on my joints and I found that my endurance was better on a bike than on running.

So last week, I went for a 40 mile ride and toward the end of the ride, I felt a little right knee pain on the lower outer knee, not in the knee joint itself. I would consider it where the ilitibial band inserts into the tibia/fibula. The pain wasn't too badk.

So I have a 100K Century this weekend, first time I have raced something of this length (I did a 50 mile ride about 1 month ago). So I decided to do a practice run this weekend and on Saturday, I biked 31 miles out to my favorite LBS. While on the way there, I noticed a twinge in the same area on my right knee. I decided to lower my seat about 1cm because one of the guys at my LBS said it might be ITB syndrome and it might be due to my seat being too high.

On the 2nd half of my practice metric century, I noticed that the pain in my knee did improve. However, around the last 7-10 miles, my right quadriceps started to hurt. It was in the inner aspect of the quad, what I would say in medical speak as the medial head of the quadriceps or vastus medialis. So literally limped into the last leg of my practice metric century. The quad felt like it was about to cramp. I had adequately hydrated (drinking a camel back 72 oz full of electrolytes, drank 4 bottles of electrolytes and had 3 powerbars/cliff bars). The quad didn't cramp but it was about to. When I was biking at a high cadence for me at around 95-100, the quad felt good but when I had to push with it during the last leg of the ride, it would hurt. After about an hour at home, the quad was good to go. Still a little soreness in the quadriceps medially but otherwise OK.

My current plan for this week is to rest. I plan on doing a short ride on Thursday but otherwise, I'm going to save it for race day.

My questions/points:
1. I think my seat is now in the sweet spot but I think it may have been the shock of the longest distance I've ridden, to date, that caused me to have the quadriceps pain. The outer knee pain actually did not become a problem. I am not planning on changing the seat height.

2. Is resting this week to help my body recuperate for the big race day the way to go or should I be trying to exercise it more this week?

BTW, I was fitted for my bike when I first got it but then I was playing around with the seat height afterwards. I think it's now where I had it initially set when first fitted.

Thanks for your patience and for your input in advance.

DScott

First, saddle position front-to-back as well as height is important for knee pain, as does pedal position. Second, sounds like overuse cramps.

Knee pain info: https://www.cptips.com/knee.htm

Cramping: https://www.ultracycling.com/training/cramping.html

mmmdonuts

Too much too soon?

docjoe

Thanks for the info. I got a chance to look at both sites and both are quite informative!