So, at long last, I may have perhaps, just maybe, turned the corner. My knee now no longer hurts in bed at night, something it continually did do for about 8 weeks non-stop, I can do pretty much the same set of knee mangling flexion exercises each morning on both my left and right knee with very little pain or discomfort (to be fair one of the exercises hurts both of my knees a bit ). On the walking front there has been some fantastic progress with now no pain at all on my daily 3 or 4 mile walk outs with the dogs and last weekend I managed to walk 17 miles all told, including a 6 mile hike over Penyghent, with very little discomfort if any and no post-walk reaction from the knee after either. To be honest at one point I was getting seriously worried about even being able to hike in the hills properly again so, psychologically, being able to now do that is a massive boost.

I can really push hard on the cycling front, both on tough hill climbs (which we have plenty of around here), and cogs fully loaded sprints, and in terms of cycling distance too, and I'm now doing this with very little knee reaction afterwards. Not huge numbers yet I know but, from strava, not really having cycled much at all for over 40 years until 22 January this year, I've put in about 250 miles and 22,000 feet of ascent. Cycling is now going to be a pretty big thing for me going forward - honestly my first ride on 22 January was so rubbish, I was wobbling, I didn't use the gears properly, I was scared going down hill whereas now, well, you'd think I was born on a saddle...

So, all in all, my game plan, with the help and guidance of my physio, is at long last paying dividends. Its been to push back against the injury and build up resistance to the hyper sensitivity that was causing the pain, whilst trying to exercise with not nearly so much impact on the knee if I can. Yeah my first attempts at running haven't been great but, in the round, they're all part and parcel of getting my knee better. Which it definitely is compared to what it was.

The other thing I also now need to work on is my weight. I was really super fit and relatively light (for me) last summer but towards the end of last year I was probably eating (and drinking) too much what with working from home and covid and all. Since not being able to run on 8 January, things have definitely gone (literally) pear shaped but, with the planets starting to align hopefully on the injury recovery front, I'm now on a healthy eating campaign going forward. I was 12 stone 11 on Monday morning and my aim is to shift over a stone of that over the coming few months.

And as for actually running? Well I'm hoping to do a big walk in the hills this weekend and also a big cycle ride, see how that goes and then just maybe have a crack at a run next week and see how we go from there