Listen To Your Body – it knows best

After completing the 233 miles with 12,583 feet of climbing over the 4 days detailed below I had a rest day on 3^rd May and rode into work on Thursday 4^th May.

On the way home on the Thursday I was aware of some pain in the back of my knee and decided I should take a couple days rest so did not ride again till Sunday when I couldn’t hold back any longer as the sun was shining so rode my Alresford 60 mile Loop.  I felt OK to start but my knee was quite painful on the return journey with a throbbing ache behind the kneecap and sharp pain on the inside behind the knee joint.

Being stubborn I then rode into work on the Monday but the pain was excruciating on the way home.  I have not had this sort of pain before so used “Dr Google” to research this pain behind my knee and inside it.  Self diagnosed that I have managed to overwork and strain my hamstring and basically need to rest.

Very annoyed at myself as this wound up being a 10 day break from the bike and reading about the causes that lead to this kind of damage I could have probably avoided this with slower increments of the miles I have been doing and not working my body so hard all the time.

I really must pay attention to the messages my body gives me as it did give me a warning and I chose to ignore it.

To add insult to injury I got drenched when finally got back on the bike last week and subsequently caught a stinker of a cold which had me unable to do any more than sit on the sofa all weekend L .

Thankfully its only May so I still have 4 months to slowly increase my intensity / distance for the big one!