Sudden Acute Knee Pain Question

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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

I have experienced this myself before.
It was brought on due to the fact I was training far more often and harder then I was previously. I was told the best way to aleviate the pain was to put some road miles in, where you dont really push hard gears, you just keep your legs moving at a fast cadence for a sustained amount of time. I put about 300 miles on the road at the beginning of the racing season this year, and it appears to have worked. Maybe it is too late to do this for you, but it gives you an idea for next year. Other then that, I was told to just take some ibuprophen, and deal with the pain, that seems to work also. If you want a professional opinion, you could try to talk to a physical therapist, or even a doctor.

-percious