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(part 7 of 13thfloormonk's ongoing saga 'Why am I constantly injured'...)
Most frustratingly spent most of the summer recovering from a broken collarbone, but made the most of it by doing some work on the turbo, typically two, sometimes three sessions a week, something like 2.5 hours max.
So once I had the all clear from the doctor to get back on the real bike, I seized the opportunity and got right back into my usual 35km a day commuting routine plus one turbo session in the first week, something like 6 hours total riding. The commuters were deliberately easy as recovery from the turbo.
So not a huge increase in riding hours or intensity, and I was doing far more than 6 hours a week before breaking the collarbone, so I'm feeling pretty aggrieved that my knees are playing up all over the shop since I've got back on the roads.
The biggest factor might be that the turbo bike is my geared road bike, and the commuter a singlespeed, but most of my turbo efforts were sweetspot stuff where I say at a lowish cadence pushing quite hard, wouldn't have thought the singlespeed would have been much harder.
Is it possible to lose strength this quickly? Or is there some weird flywheel effect from a turbo which isn't replicated on the road?
Are the saddle heights the same on turbo and commuter?,my knees are sensitive to any variation.
Singlespeed could be the issue. Your never in the right gear so unable to take it easy. My mantra for a spinning recovery ride is change gear to the one easier than you think you should be on which takes the strain off your legs and makes you spin more. I’d ditch the singlespeed and commute on a geared bike.
Setups are as identical as they can be, certainly saddle height, pedals etc. Maybe there's still some immeasurable difference I'm not aware of (e.g. difficult to measure exact knee over pedal spindle position).
Aberdeenlune - I'd been debating that, hence my other thread about putting gears on my singlespeed commuter! It's fairly low geared though and I like being able to neglect it horribly during the winter months, have a baby at home so can't be spending time washing and lubing chains after each salty commute.
Am thinking maybe I take a break from the turbo, the CX season is upon us now so I'm not going to get any usefully fitter in the next couple of weeks. Then I can use the road bike on the dry days to commute and mix up the load on my knees until they toughen up again.
the human body adjusts quickly...
Most likely the "knee thing" will go away.
But danger: if you push too hard right now there is indeed some danger of damage.
To avoid this better borrow a road bike for a couple of weeks and then go back to your original single speed bike.
I'd guess weak glutes or some of the other supporting muscles. I get this all the time if I over-turbo as you don't need to stabalise so much so all the supporting muscles weaken quickly relative to the main peddling muscles and your knees take the brunt. I am not a physio though - maybe og and see one? Or just do some glute stregthening excersises and see how you go?
Maybe ease off on the distance commuting and do it on the geared road bike for a bit. Knees are hard to fix if you mess them up.
The last three replies nail it I think, will dust off the road bike (don't know why I'm so reluctant to take my nice bike out again!) but also work on the strengthening, maybe stick to rollers for a while instead of turbo, have been meaning to practice on them anyway...
In my head I'd hoped using the turbo would have helped maintain the form I had before I broke the collarbone, naive of me I suppose!
I'm reluctant to suggest this since you are having knee issues, but with cx season looming, once the pain has subsided you could consider going for a few short gentle jogs? Whenever I go for a jog it highlights how poor my glutes are but i feel its strengthens them fast
Another possibility in the mix is temperature. Whenever I’ve been recovering from knee niggles I’ve found that keeping my knees warm is really important - unless it’s actually hot out some knee warmers or leggings really help things to heal better.
Setups are as identical as they can be, certainly saddle height, pedals etc. Maybe there’s still some immeasurable difference I’m not aware of (e.g. difficult to measure exact knee over pedal spindle position).
<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">In my experience, saddle fore/aft position can cause knee pain if it is not right. You can compare the two bikes (assuming your saddles are similar) by hanging a plumb line from the saddle nose and measuring the distance to the bottom bracket.</span>