After my day off yesterday, my knee was feeling much better this morning.  There was still a little pain, so I chose to delay my early morning active recovery ride, and see how the knee felt later in the day.

This knee issue is one of those things that always has me on the fence, as to whether to completely rest it until it is totally pain free or whether to do some light exercise.  I have experienced several ‘niggles’ over the years, and in many cases doing some light exercise seemed to actually help the situation.

I the case of this knee issue, the pain today was not bad at all and mostly the knee just felt ‘stiff’. I decided to do my active recovery ride after work.  Before the ride however, I told myself that if I experienced acute pain in the knee, I would stop immediately.

How do I decide if the pain is too much to continue?  I use the typical 0-10 pain scale, where a ‘0’ is no pain at all and a ’10’ is excruciating agony.  Any time I am working out, and the pain is a consistent ‘3’ or higher, I stop.  I am OK with the pain being a ‘3’ or ‘4’, right at the very beginning of a workout, but if it’s still there after 3-5 minutes, I will stop.

Today, on my active recovery ride, my pain level only got to a ‘2’ and it actually got less and less the more I rode.  By the end of the sixty minute ride, the pain was no more than a ‘1’ at most.  Immediately after my ride, I iced down the knee and as I write this blog, it feels quite good.

Did I make the right decision?  I don’t know yet.  It’s only when I wake up tomorrow morning, that I will know if I pushed too far.  It’s such a delicate balancing act….