Mallorca 70.3 2014 - not a race report

(There's an actual race report here at Mr TOTKat's blog, if you're looking for one.)

After the Rotterdam Marathon, I made my right knee quite cross. Under orders from my coach, I was not to race at Mallorca 70.3 2 weeks after that happened.

So, the plan was to fly out to Mallorca the Monday before the race, ride the course and swim a bit and then ride a bit more. but no race for me.  As the week progressed, somewhat predictably, I decided that I would at least do the swim and bike legs on race day, but not the run.  Then I thought I'd see how I felt at the beginning of the run and stop if anything felt funny/wrong.

Friday, the day before the race, we went to rack our bikes and hang up our transition bags at race transition.  I found my bike racking point and noted the land-marks so I could find it again when I came barrelling in from the swim course the following day.  Then I headed back through to hang up my red and blue bags and then meet up again with Mr TOTKat on the way out of transition and back to the hotel.  As I walked through the women's changing tent I realised I still had my bike computer in the blue bag, so decided to hang up my bag and then jog back to my bike to leave it on my bike ready in the morning.  My bike was a long way out from the transition tent, and on the jog back again to the tent I saw that Mr TOTKat was looking for me - probably wondering what was taking so long.

I jogged onwards towards the tent and in a sudden blur of confusion, tripped on the carpet and went flying (apparently in quite a balletic manner) forwards, with speed.  Landing on my right knee first, I somehow landed even more heavily on the left and I heard a popping sound.  I rolled onto my back, pain radiating out from my left kneecap, and started to bawl my eyes out.  I was convinced I'd broken my knee.

As the volunteers came to assist, I looked at my knee and, in the same way an ink drop spreads in a glass of water, I could see dark purple/black spreading out fast from a point on the front of my knee.  I watched in horror as it spread and my immediate thought was I needed ice right away.  The volunteers helped me up and into the tent, gave me water and some ice appeared.  A volunteer pressed it against my knee and I tried to sit up a bit rather than lie flat.  It felt OK for a few moments, but then I felt really sick.  The blue/black colouration started to recede almost as miraculously appeared and a medically trained volunteer made sure I could bend it.  I had waves of nausea still, so they were keen to make sure I hadn't banged my head (I hadn't).

But, this was it.  Race over.  Both knees were swollen quite a bit, grazed from the carpet, and the left was really difficult.  Mr TOTKat helped me to hobble back to the hotel.  I felt so stupid.  The over-riding feeling was that I'd been a complete idiot. I could have left the bike computer until the morning as we would have full access to bikes in the morning to put water on them and check tyres etc. but for some reason I decided that Garmin needed to go on there right then.

So.  Coach got his desire that I didn't race, but I also only got to ride once that week instead of 3-4 times.  I swam a few times, but only one proper swim set.  And I got to pay for a race where I didn't even cross the start line.  On the plus side, I didn't have to run in 32C.  Which was brutal even just supporting on the day.

On the other plus side; we got to meet a whole bunch of new people, Mr TOTKat had his best 70.3 swim time ever, and we had a week away from work.

Kneeees!

Oh!  The last few runs, shhhh!, my knees have been FINE!  Even today, in the slippery mud at Parkrun.  Not a peep out of them.  Kinda slightly a tiny bit happy about that.  Really hope they continue to behave, starting with tomorrow's Parkrun triple!

Long, boring Saturday morning

I've got a 5km swim tomorrow.  *yawn* It is going to be... SO. BORING. The main reason for doing it was to regain some pride after the Thames swim a while back, and to check out what Dorney lake is like for the HSBC triathlon in September.  Now Mr TOTKat isn't swimming tomorrow, I've got nothing there around the pride regain.  Conversely, I couldn't be humiliated again by him beating me again as he's not swimming.

I've been quiet on the race training front recetly.  Mostly because I've done no cycling and very little running.  Since the Virgin Triathlon, I've done two long runs to extend my distance in the lead up to Nike+ Run To The Beat in a few weeks' time.  The first was two weekends ago and we did a long, slow run around the Wimbledon Common Parkrun route of about 9.5km.  As usual, I strapped up my left knee and that felt lovely.  Confident and comfortable, all went well until about 6-7km in when my right knee started to niggle... and niggle.. and get worse and worse.  I pushed through as it didn't feel the same as my left knee does and I was keen not to give in to anything that really wasn't a proper problem.  Which was a mistake.  5 days of ow followed.

The following weekend we extended the distance to 13.9km.  Again my left knee strapped up and fine and I strapped the right to see what might happen.  Same as the previous week.  Not good.  So, a trip back to the physio on Wednesday this week and he was unimpressed.  He can't really work out why/what is going on and is a bit peeved by it all.  A supposition now is that perhaps, as I've not been doing a lot of running in the grand scheme of things and I've not been doing running for very long (around 2 years), I'm actually just really bad at running.  Not just slow and crap (he laughed at my 10km time in the last triathlon, bastard), but slow and damaging and crap.

The current idea is to foam roll my awfully tight quads a bit, try a quick (deliberately a bit faster than usual) run to see if speed makes it worse/brings it on earlier, and try not strapping the left one to see how that is getting on.  In parallel, he's suggested I look at Pose method running.  Which is interesting in that when I started to learn to run, I did run very much like falling fowards and nowadays I run very upright so there may be something in the method change.

Anyone got any thoughts/ideas/experience with Pose?  I've read a bit and it seems logical in some ways, but...

Bitten

We appear to have signed up for another Olympic distance triathlon.  In a month's time.  See youse at the HSBC one in Eton!

(shame I'll have yet again bugger all training as I've pinched something in the other knee now!)

Brick this!

I think I might get 'round next weekend.  If I can work out how to get the k-tape to stay on through the swim, it's going to work.

T2 brick test today; 31km bike followed immediately by a 7.8km run.  The secondary tests were, some race fuel (High5 EnergySource) to see if my stomach is OK with it, and drinking on the bike.

Apart from being yelled at by a twat in a Chelsea Tractor at Wimbledon Common (dude, if you had a less stupid car and a bit less of a vein sticking out on your forehead, you'll probably live longer), the bike was good.  I'm still completely useless at using a bottle on the bike - seriously, if you've never tried it, it's a lot harder than it looks.  I can get the bottle out of the rack relatively OK as long as I'm free-wheeling, but drinking is really difficult and getting it back in the rack again is pretty stressful.  I ended up with sticky drink on my hands, handlebars and down my leg a bit and some of it in my mouth.  My heart rate monitor hadn't worked for the cycle, so fuelling was really going to be a bit off as I'd got no idea of the amount I'd burned through.

31.16km in 01:11:04 including slowing down for traffic lights, being a total useless goit with the drinks bottle several times etc., so I'm hoping that will translate to 01:32 - 01:35 next weekend over the 40km race route.

I chugged the remainder of the fuel drink and the run started off pretty nicely.  As usual between bike and run, my legs felt a bit heavy at the start but I went off at a reasonable pace and the route was a loop of around 2.5km which allowed for stuff going wrong and being not too far from home if it did. 

Pace-wise, that's around my usual fastest 10km pace -without- having cycled 31km first.  So I'm quite encouraged by that.  That sort of pace should give me a 10km run time of around 55:00 - 56:00, hopefully.   My knee stayed quiet throughout and the only indication of anything not being perfectly fine was a tight hamstring into the back of the knee and that was it.

So, I'm pretty sure I'll get 'round next weekend.  No idea what transition times will look like, but with a 30:00 swim, a 01:35 bike and a 56:00 run I'm looking at an overall race time of 03:01:00 plus transition, so a target of 03:10:00 seems reasonable.

Kinda sorta rather promising

We pootled up to the common for a run on the Parkrun course; a 2.25 km loop, so if my knee went pop it was never far to hobble back to the car.  I was all strapped up with the K-tape and ready for a slow trot.

Given that at the British 10K 2 weekends ago my knee got angry around the 7km mark I had to go at least that far to see what happened.  We set off at a very gentle pace, really very very gentle and kept it steady for the first few km.  At 4km, everything was feeling fine so we agreed to turn up the gas at 7km to try to force something to happen if it hadn't already.

7km we took it up a notch and again at 8.5km and my knee was not only feeling OK, but it actually felt -better- than the other one.  It felt like a smooth, well-oiled joint; noticeably more comfortable and 'right' feeling than usual.  I tried to keep up with Mr TOTKat when he kicked off at 8.5km and almost sort of did then decided I was too under-fuelled to go on past 9km so we stopped there and had a gentle jog to cool down a bit before a stretch, drink and back home again.

So.  Without wanting to get too excited, I think the K-taping may have made some sort of difference.  How much of a difference will only become apparent with a brick session.  So I'm planning to do one tomorrow (and combine it with testing some race fuel for next weekend - OMG LONDON IS NEXT WEEKEND! *cough*  With all the injury mess, I've done no training and it's my first Olympic distance triathlon!  Halp!)

K-tape

Physio visit involved a recap of the MRI results (mild ITB irritation, fat pad inflammation and mild fraying of the cartilege - perhaps related to the syringing many years ago) and a bit of a trot with physio in tow, assessing my gait.  Apparently my back is very rigid, my hips do something weird and one foot does a floppy thing every 5-6 steps at slow speed but at fast speed my gait becomes much better.  He prodded my hips and glutes and did some deep-tissue work on those (OW!) to loosen things up a bit.

Current thinking is to tape my patella to encourage it to move a bit differently, to see what effect that has on the pain:-

Will go for a decent run at the weekend to see how that works out.  And in the mean time physio is drawing some pictures and having a think about what's going on with my hip movement to see what's going on there.  With 1 week left to London thereafter there may be some other interim management required to get me through that before the more long-term management strategy.

British 10K

Having specifically asked the orthopaedic surgeon whether I could safely train/exercise and not been told it was a bad idea, I decided to run the British 10K last weekend.

Having not run at all for a month (the last run was 4 weeks earlier and only 5km) and done naff all running at all in the last 4 months, it was always a bit of a stretch to consider even finishing a 10km run in any reasonable time (or, if you're being sensible about it, to go that far one one go).  But I'm nothing if not bloody-minded and pretty fed up about not being able to compete in sports events properly/at all at the moment.

It was an earlyish start and the tubes were quiet.  A good bowl of porridge in our bellies, we made our way in to town for the run.  There were a few runners on the tube, but nothing that gave any idea of the scale of this event even slightly.  It was only really apparent when we were lined up, queueing up the road to cross the start line.  We weren't all that far from the front and turning around to look behind us, the number behind us was phenomenal.  Around 25,000 people ran the British 10K - I say "ran", there were an awful lot of walkers.  People who walked from start to finish and never had intended to run (it's called the "British 10K run", the clue is in the title!), people who were just doing it for charity and that's where I went wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people raising money for charity.  But I think it absolutely ruins a lot of sport events; the London marathon is two events now, the elite runners and then people who raise money for charity by titting about in a banana costume.  It's not a sport event for anyone who isn't an elite because it's so hard to get a place without raising money for charity.  And, to be honest, I think that really really sucks.  Yes, there are people who are trying really hard, for them.  And there are people who simply can't run 10km.  But it's just frustrating for people who actually just want to enter a 10km running race and not be made to feel guilty for not raising money for charity.  Seriously, if I had to raise money for every race I entered I'd only be able to enter one per year because, you know what, people get charity fatigue and you can't just keep asking for sponsorship all of the time.  It's a sad state of affairs that a large proportion of the population equates "normal" people doing sporting events with raising money for charity and that there's no other reason you'd be doing it.  Oh I'm not sure where I'm going with this, it's just frustrating.

Anyway.  Race started, we ran.  We ran around everyone who was walking, and by god there were a -lot- of those all through the race.  I needed a wee from about 20 minutes before the start (yes there were loos but we were "kettled" for over 40 minutes before the start and I needed to go again) so spent a lot of time considering exactly how endurance runners deal with this sort of thing until the 4.5km mark where there were loos - yay!  I stopped my watch while I queued and weed and started it up again when I was done.  And it was rather warm.  I don't deal with warm very well.  Felt a lot better after the comfort break, but not long after that (around 7km) my knee decided to say something.  And it got noisier and noisier, but there was no point in not finishing, so I did.  57:something on the watch.  And then we went to find food and instant ice-packs.  And accidentally had awful burger and chips and beer...

...followed by a total fail when we got home when we ended up having takeaway pizza.  *sigh*

OK, so I managed to finish a 10km run, but I'm not feeling enthusiasm or a sense of achievement.  Mostly because my knee is still in indeterminate state, but that aside, the time was cack and the official time awful due to the pee stop (01:04!  Yes, the loo queue was looooong!).  How can that be something to even be OK about, never mind proud?

*clonk*

The good: After a good few calls, I think I may finally have got my MRI results and notes sent to the physio.

The bad: I have discovered a new symptom and I don't like it.  The knee, under load, now has an abnormal feeling movement when squatting (*clonk*).  Where load may be simply body-weight.  It feels Wrong.

I really don't like it.  And I'm not sure what to do with it.  I'm hoping that I get an appointment with my physio again soon with the MRI results notes through from the hospital and I can discuss it with him so I'll call the physio at lunch time tomorrow to see if the notes have arrived yet.

Somethingsomethingpinchedsomething

I was at work and in the middle of something when the surgeon phoned with my MRI results.  I caught something about "he (the sports physician who did the MRI) made a very bold statement and said it's definitely not the IT band" and "knee tracking" and "pinching the fat pad".  I asked if I need to lay off exercise and training and he said some stuff about being OK to do things that don't hurt.  It was all a bit too much of a context switch from what I was doing at work at the time to follow in any detail.  The important bits that I did take in were that I need a set of sessions with the physio, 6 to 8 of those, and that it's OK to do stuff.  To be honest, I really don't care any more what the diagnosis is, given most of the treatments/rehabilitations are exactly the same for an awful lot of knee-based injury.  As long as there's nothing that's going to get worse over time if we don't do something with it and given there's nothing going on with bones or cartilage, risk there is extremely low.

So I did a quick trot around the block a couple of times this morning.  Average pace 08:12, peak 06:17, only over 2.5km but I've not run in 4 weeks, so best not to go nuts.  (so, er, I'll be doing, or at least starting, the London 10K tomorrow *cough*)

Still no news really

Saw the sports physician yesterday.  He prodded a bit and took history and decided it's probably an insertion of the ham string tendon.  He wanted to prove it's not a cartilage problem for sure, given it's all very close together around that area, so booked me in for an MRI.  The MRI was later in the day and I got to stick my leg inside a 1.5 Tesla magnet.  Noisy thing!

I should get a call from the orthopaedic surgeon with the results tomorrow (as the sports physician is on holiday now).  So, hopefully I'll actually have a concrete diagnosis by the end of the day.

Funny how we started with a suspected insertion a few weeks back, went through the possibly hysterical break and/or dislocation, through cartilage damage and back to an insertion again.

No real update yet

But I have an appointment tomorrow to see a sports physician with a bunch of diagnostic toys.  What's been nice over the last couple of days is a call from my physio, following up where I'd got to with getting a referral to someone with some cool diagnostic toys and then a call today from my GP to follow up from his side.  Well, he's not my assigned GP, but he's the doctor at the surgery I've been seeing for my knee wonkiness.

Current suspect between the physio and GP is now cartilage, but we'll see tomorrow.

Sod.

So I'd been sort of doing my physio instructed exercises for my knee but there was still a niggling wrongness going on and I'd not had a follow-up appointment so I arranged an appointment this evening in advance of the weekend's races, in case a quick bit of acupuncture might be in order to help get through them.

Bloody good thing I did.

The nerve inflammation is lesser and the stiffness is gone compared with 2.5 weeks ago, but what it has shown up is a potentially serious problem.  My left fibula is either broken or dislocated.  Or, more likely from what we saw this evening, both.  The physio had a good old poke and yank and got a second and third opinion from two others (one of whom had the decency to say "wow, that's really not right!") and then some ultrasound shows up what rather looks like a break where the outer edge of the bone has splintered in a fanned-out pattern in addition to the head of the fibula being way too far back compared with where it should be.  This would explain absolutely everything with all of the symptoms (and some others I'd not mentioned because I didn't really think to).  The kind of break it looks like would be as a result of a hard impact.  *cough*  Like a bicycle accident.  *ahem*

So.  I'm waiting to hear back from the physio as to what his sports doctor thinks and whether I can get a scan ASAP to work out -exactly- what's going on.  Best case, it's "just" dislocated and needs relocation either in the clinic or in hospital (more likely given the kind of dislocation involved).  Worst case it's broken and partly healed and dislocated and a nightmare to fix.   There was talk of months of pinning and fiddling about after unpinning etc.

All I can do is wait to hear back.  And my default position right now is no racing this weekend until I hear that I definitely can.  *twiddles thumbs and waits for the phone to ring*  To be honest, I'm feeling fine about it all and I'm glad this is happening now rather than this time next year.

Pay-off

Tonight was my first real test of my knee.  I cycled in to work this morning, then cycled home and straight out for a run - T2 brick session.  OK, so it's not my race bike or my race bike setup and the cycling is quite stop-start (15km each way nonetheless) and I only did 20 minutes running afterwards (under-fuelled to do much else really).  But still.  My knee was totally fine.  Not a twinge.  Nuffin.  :o)

Next event is London to Brighton on Sunday.  Should be fun!

Annoying (but successful) run

Parkrun was -wet- yesterday morning.  Squishy, muddy and with big puddles.  A great test for a gyppy knee with uneven ground, wet gravel, wet tree roots and big puddles to wriggle 'round and leap over.

To cut the story short, my knee was completely fine.  I had to stop once on each lap to do up a lace that had come undone (annoyingly, my trainers designated for muddy running are the only ones without elastic laces), which cost me around 25s overall.  And I put in a time of 25:40, which if you take off the 25s for titting about with shoes and take into consideration the leaping and swerving, is a non-shabby time for me as my current PB for that course is 25:08.

I was good and iced my knee after the run - the nerve is quite inflamed and hot and still needs attention.  And there was no data point of having cycled before running, but it's a promising start to have been able to run 5km with no problems at all, less than a week after not being able to even hobble very well on that knee.

Physio update

I went and saw the physio and he reckons there's no bio-mechanical problem.  It looks like the nerve is pretty enflamed and that it's a case of IT Band insertion.  He acupunctured my IT bands (feels a bit like a big static shock and is nothing at all like I imagined) and said it'd feel like I've been bruised for the rest of the day, but to be honest I felt fine.  My IT band on the left leg was so tight that he said "it's supposed to be like a trampoline but I wouldn't want to get on that trampoline 'cause I'd end up on the moon", then proceeded to have his needle bent by my IT band 'cause it's that blimmin' tight.  He also gave me some exercises to do 3 times a day (to strengthen my VMO - yes, I was totally right to try doing that, but I'm a "global mobiliser" so they don't engage that easily 'cause the other muscles just take over where at all possible - and glutes) and to try a test run at the weekend.

Parkrun tomorrow morning it is then and I'm to text him with feedback on it.  If my knee goes *poof* I'll need to go back in ASAP for more acupuncture.

Physio

I have a referral and an appointment at silly o'clock tomorrow morning.  In the words of my doctor, this physio practice is "old school" and focusses on treatment that will get me back running faster.  The treatment will be painful as all heck, but very effective.  The toss-up was between this or a longer, more drawn-out type of treatment with more focus on the long-term stuff.  I figure that I'll go for the short-term effective treatment and get a second referral for the extended, long-term work later on.  Both.  Not either.

The short of it is that the doctor thinks is is fairly acute IT band syndrome, exacerbated by going so hard on the bike before running each triathlon, thus tightening them right up at the time.  He was almost shocked to hear that the pain comes on so quickly into the runs, which was almost a relief to see.

We'll see what tomorrow morning's assessment brings.

I FINISHED!

I finished the Thames Turbo Sprint triathlon (TTT) #3!  This is a huge psychological boost after DNFing the first two in the series with my naffed-up knee.  The knee is definitely getting better but still not all there.  The first two TTTs, it gave up under 1km into the run to the point where it was painful even to walk/hobble.  This time, after lots of rest (no running for 4 weeks), working on strengthening glutes in general and the VMOs, it was totally fine up to 2.5km into the run.  It started to niggle a bit a and hurt by 3km, but for the next km, focussing on stopping my foot from rotating inwards (I pronate very very slightly, not enough to correct with footwear) and on chasing down a woman in front of me to take my mind off it, it went well.

The race in general...

Being in the second (faster) wave for the first time was a worry for me.  The second wave is made up of the people who have a faster overall race time, so being nearish the start in the pool in that wave meant that I was very likely to spend most of the race being overtaken by the speedy ones.

In the pool 40th in that wave (a bit of a shock, given I'm usually around the first 20 in the pool in the first wave) and I didn't feel great in the swim.  2 overtakes by 382 and 384 was a bit demoralising, but generally less stressful than I thought it would be.  Calm, polite stop at the end of the length where they'd tapped my feet, and off again behind them.  Not sure my swim time is going to be particularly good given how it felt compared with the last race, but we'll see soon enough.

T1 wasn't too bad, having everything laid out in order; glasses, helmet, race-belt, shoes; went pretty well.  In that order, my feet are more likely to be more dried when I try to jam them on quickly whilst not falling over.

Out on the bike and -OH- -YES-!  The new bike set-up turned out to be awesome!  The feeling that every ounce of effort I put in with my legs actually turns into forward motion of the bike is so nice.  It was a bit windy in places on the course, but with more power transfer to the road it mattered less than before.  One of the guys who overtook me in the pool (382) was a bit in front of me and in ripe position for me to reel him in.  So I did.  Felt great.  Then he took me back.  Then, yuh huh, I overtook him again and didn't see him until I was slowing down for the big roundabout at the end of the outward leg when he overtook me again.  I thought I'd lost him further down the return leg, but then he showed up again and I overtook him one last time before he came back a bit later in time for the end of the bike course.  It was so much fun and really handy to have someone around the same pace as me as it made sure I didn't drop the pace.  My thighs were telling me I'd put in some effort this time.  During the non-compete zone we had a nice little chat about it and I reassured 382 he'd thrash me in the run as I'm pretty rubbish at that.  (And he did).

T2 was a bit of an oops.  I went down the wrong side of the racks, racked my bike the same way as I had in the morning, but this time it meant that all the bikes around me and mine were all facing the same way - jamming them together.  Being on the wrong side of my bike meant that I couldn't get to my running shoes without shoving my bike about quite a bit.  Still.  Out for the run and praying that my knee behaved itself after the work I'd put in on it.

Taking the advice of the guy ahead of my waiting to get into the pool at the start and Mr 382, I took the start of the run gently.  And before I knew it, I was at the 1km marker and my knee felt fine!  2km in and still fine, I was set to finish the whole 5km regardless of anything that happened after that.  2.5km and, ah, knee started to niggle.  Still just behind the same lady I'd been behind from the start of the run, I was starting to think I'd better get a move on so I can finish sooner and if things hurt there's less time with them hurting.  Coming up to the 4km marker it was time to get a wriggle on.  Knee niggling, but not cripplingly painful to the point of inability to walk as happened the last two times, I turned up the pace to get my heart rate up from 170 to 180 for that last km.  Spurred on by the lovely kids around the course (one of the really nice things about the TTTs), I decided to put in a sprint finish as I was pretty sure that Mr TOTKat wasn't far behind and there was no way I was going to have him cross the line before me (he started 8 minutes behind me in the pool) and powered over the line, knees high, chest up and head forward.

MrTOTKat was seconds behind me, which pretty much stopped me from bursting into tears of A. relief that I'd actually bloody finished the race this time and B. disappointment that my knee isn't completely fixed.  I did get a little bit of the panic attack breathing I've had in the past, but got it under control quite quickly.  Now... let's see if I've managed to hit my target time of 01:20.  *crossed fingers*

Small victories. Or "progress".

Since Parkrun on 2nd April, I've run twice (750m tops in each of the first two Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlons).  It didn't go very well either time with my left knee squealing in pain, so I've been working on strengthening my inner quads (Vastus Medialis Obliques) and glutes (pretty much the whole of them) with weighted walking lunges, swiss ball bridges and swiss ball hamstring curls.  I've also been on the ibuprofen and icing my knee (not religiously).

This morning, as there's no other reasonable opportunity before the next Sprint Tri (I'm doing photos for Parkrun next Saturday and some bikey stuff the following week), I ran the Wimbledon Parkrun.  And there was not a hint of a niggle of a whisper of anything from my knee.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nuffin.  Oh and I smashed my PB by 57s :oD  (and went up the WAVA Age Grading from 58.1% to 60.3% - interestingly, looking at the calculator and cross-referencing with my VO2max, I -should- be able to do a 24:08 at my current fitness level, though that's probably on tarmac/paving rather than gravel paths and woodland floor as the Parkrun is).

Icing and Ibuprofen and sitting on my ass for the rest of today and no more running until the next Sprint Tri.  Just in case.  More strength work for my inner quads and butt and I -think- it might be good.  Only time will tell.

Self-treatment

My knee is playing up.  Has been for weeks.  First time was the first Clapham 10K of the season.  It hurt for 6km of the 10km course and I ran through it.  It then felt fine and I got hit by a car on my bike resulting in both knees being pretty bruised on all sides and swollen on all sides with tangerine-sized lumps.  Shortly after that I ran a 5km Parkrun and it niggled a little but didn't particularly hurt.  So I thought it was all fine.

About 3-4 days after that, I did a training 5km run which hurt roughly 2km into it and I thought I'd just run through it like I did with the 10km race.  But it got worse.  And worse.  And then a LOT worse.  I slowed right down, then I couldn't even jog slowly, then even walking was excruciating to the point where the joint just didn't work right at all and started to buckle.  So I hopped hopped home, iced it and heated it and ate Ibuprofen like Smarties.  Next day, I could barely walk but I -had- to be at work, so I went in and tried to stay off it as much as possible.  Over the next few days it felt better and quickly was back to feeling normal.  So I thought I was going to be fine for the first Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon.  I always had in the back of my head that if it started to hurt, I'd pull up in the run.

Lo and behold, I put in a reasonable swim (a PB), then a good bike (another PB) and kicked off into the run.  My knee felt OK for the first 500m or so, then went downhill and I pulled up around the 1km marker and threw in the towel.  I stayed off it for a whole week in the vain hope that it'd be fine for the next Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon on the following Monday - 7 days after the first one.

I put in an even better swim (a new PB) and a monster (for me) cycle in gusting headwinds (another new PB), and I started the run feeling good.  Willing my knee to feel fine, it did for the first 750m or so and then headed South again.  Pulling up again, DNFing again, I was pretty sure it's a case of one quad being stronger than the other.  I decided I'm going to self-treat and do it properly this time.

My thinking... if I go to the doctor for a referral to a physio, the likely diagnoses are either runner's knee (which I can treat with ice, heat, ibuprofen and rest firstly and then work on strengthening my inner quad to realign the patella) or something worse which will take longer to fix.  So, by taking the next 4 weeks to self-treat and rehabilitate as if for runner's knee I'm really not losing out.  If it gives up in the next race after 4 weeks of Doing It My Way, I'll then go to the doctor for a referral.  I'm damned if I'm going to DNF every bloody triathlon this year and not run more than 1km without my knee telling me where to get off.