A couple of weeks ago I experienced some significant knee pain after an hour and a half on the spinner at the YMCA. I started to feel a little pain towards the end of the workout, and a little popping around the bottom and right side of my knee cap (possibly the collateral ligament or meniscus - but I'll discuss that further on in this post).

A few hours after the workout my leg stiffened up, and that evening I was only able to limp around the house - even after taking a few Advil. For two days I experienced quite a bit of knee pain and wasn't able to walk around much at all. It hurt to bend my leg, although it felt fine to put pressure on it in the straight position.

By the third day I was able to limp around with a lot less pain... mostly just stiffness, and by the 4th day I was able to move around and bend the leg without pain. I concluded that I had just strained something but didn't have any serious injury.

Fast forward a few days and I'm back on the road with my riding buddies on a hilly ride with an aggressive pace. I start to feel pain in my leg at about 10 miles, and by 15 miles I'm ready to call it quits.

Unfortunately I gave in to the peer pressure of the group and their friendly jeers about me whimping out, and pressed on for another 15 miles. It was torture though, and I found myself repeating the same 2-day painful recovery afterwards that I described above. Only this time my knee would lock up if I left my leg in a bent position for more than a few minutes, causing severe pain to straighten it back out.

It's now Friday, almost a full week later, and the pain has subsided. I just finished a 20-minute light spinner ride at the YMCA, after a very light 10-minute warm up. I'm definitely taking it easy - knee pain can be excruciating and I don't want to be out of commission for another two days.

I've done a lot of knee research online during the last two weeks to hopefully figure out what could be causing the pain. Here are some helpful online resources that provide detailed knee anatomy, and some good descriptions of common knee injuries:

• McKinley Health Center (U of Illinois) - Everything you need to know about knee injuries, with pictures describing each part of the knee, and showing stretches that can help prevent knee injuries.
• Knee Guru - General knee information, with a good section on diagnosing symptoms based on the location of pain and whether it occurs during or after the exercise.
• eMedicine Health - Comprehensive information about knee injuries, including causes, symptoms, medical treatment and self-care treatment.
• Sports Injury Clinic - great site with information about all kinds of sports-related injuries. Includes knee diagrams that identify the bones, ligaments, and tendons, and discusses possible types of injuries based on the location of the pain (side, top, bottom, etc).

As you can see, there's quite a bit of information available online about knee injuries (and please feel free to post your own link if you've found a helpful site). For example, I learned that a meniscus tear cannot heal itself - it can only be fixed with surgery.

I should probably just go in and see the doctor, but I also started a new job this week and I just plain haven't had time to slow down with finishing up the previous job and trying to make a good impression at the new job.

My game plan right now is to take it very easy and slowly get back into riding. I don't want to end my riding season in early May, no matter how far behind it leaves me with my riding buddies!