A little background. I spent most of the winter and early spring training for the Boston marathon, most running weeks of 50-65 miles, the occasional trainer ride on the road bike and no swimming. The build up to Boston and the race itself were injury free. The week after the race, I did a little bit of lifting, and a few light runs.
I had a duathlon and then a half-IM coming up, so the second week after the race I jumped back into tri training. A hard interval workout on the tri bike on Monday, swam for the first time in months on Tuesday, a short hard hilly ride on Wednesday, swam again Thursday. Sometime that week I began experiencing some discomfort below my knee, in my patellar tendon. Nothing sharp or acute, just a dull discomfort and a little bit of a strain feeling. Thinking I was in great shape from the marathon, I was eager to jump into tri training. But it probably wasn’t smart to do 2 hard rides in 3 days as my first rides back on the tri bike in a few months.
Most of my riding this winter has been on the road bike, I had spent little to no time on the tri bike and jumped back on, probably with too much intensity. Could it be the steep angle of my tri bike, the introduction of intensity which hadn’t been there? A combination of both?
The only other possibility is my return to swimming. I am sure I flex my knee too much, both on my freestyle kick and when just doing kicking drills. Could that in anyway stress the patellar tendon? I really don’t swim that much (~2,500yds a couple times a week and maybe kick 300-500 yds).
I can’t imagine this is running related as I was doing 200+ miles a month up to Boston and even my runs the week after, although slow from being a little sore, were pain free.
So was it jumping back on the tri bike too eagerly? Poor kicking form? The pain isn’t bad, but I want to resolve it. That being said, if it’s likely that cycling is the cause, I’d like to continue swimming, and vice versa. So I am trying to narrow down the likely culprit so as to avoid that activity but be able to train the others.
As I said, the pain isn’t sharp, and I can run far and/or fast with nothing more than a dull ache. I’ve been nervous to get back on the bike. The tendon isn’t really sore to the touch, but occasionally I feel it shift or pop, it’s kind of gross and then the kneecap area will be sore. I’ve had IT band issue in the past and occasionally feel the IT band shift across the outside of the knee, that has happened for years and never been bothersome. What I am feeling now is definitely the patellar tendon (not outside the knee, directly below it) moving in some way (across a bone, or shifting into place with a dull snap, similar to the feeling of the IT band sliding across the bone on the outside of the knee but more of a thud than a snap). The snap isn’t particularly painful when it happens a few times a day, just kind of unsettling feeling and a little sore afterwards.
Thanks for any insight.
