Sudden Acute Knee Pain Question

verve825

Hi All-
Recently (last week) I began to experience sudden onset, acute pain in my right knee, radiating downward into my shin. The pain is very simialr to a shint splint, in fact. The pertinent facts:

I mountain bike exclusively, have a good mileage base (~3k miles this year), and have never experienced pain like this in the past. While I have been playing around with saddle position, I had not moved the saddle in the two weeks prior to the onset of pain.

The only unusual cycling experience I've had recently was test-riding a few road bikes; in doing so, I was pushing a 53/12 for a few miles, but this certainly did not seem to result in greater torsional forces on my knee than riding a MTB through technical ground, for example.

I've been training for a multi-day ride in early October, and would really hate to throw all that training out the window.

If anyone has any insight or experience with this issue, I'd be grateful for the info.

Thanks in advance,
jefe

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patch70

Does the knee lock?
Does it 'give way' underneath you?
Does it click when you bend or straigten it sometimes?
Does it feel swollen inside the joint?
Are there any tender points?
Have you had any previous knee injuries?

There are many possibilities and it will probably be worth seeing a doctor about it. One possible cause could be a damaged meniscus (which is the shock absorbing tissue in the joint that cushions between the femur or thigh bone and the tibia or shin bone). However, it is not really a great idea to be diagnosing things like this with limited information and without examining your knee.