In Which My Knee Hurts for a Week
May. 15th, 2017 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aSo last, last weekend, the first weekend of May, I had a marvelous Saturday hike. It was one of my favorite routes of late: east from my house, up above Strawberry Canyon, and then into Tilden. It's really nice, because it gets me on trails (or at least stairs) about a mile from my house, and from there I can go anywhere I want along pleasant hiking paths.
So on Saturday, I choose a very challenging route: up around the fire trails above Strawberry Canyon (as usual) and then into TIlden. But from there I decided to walk the southwest side of Tilden, around Grizzly Peak, then to take the western most trails along the entire length of Tilden, until I got to Jewel Lake, which is the last civilized point in the north of Tilden, on the way to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park.
Most of these trails were new to me. Grizzly Peak Trail took me westward, and it was a nice trail running along a hillside, with the Wildcat Canyon to my right. It's the opposite side of the Canyon that I usually walk on. The only downside is that you could occasionally hear the cars whizzing by on Grizzly Peak Blvd., just the other side of the ridge. Then I walked Selby Trail northward for a few miles until I hit Canyon Drive, the big steep road coming out of the north side of Tilden. There was a bit of Selby Trail in the middle that was just ugly grassland, but most of it was wooded and very pleasant. Past Canyon Drive it became Memory Trail, which took me around the Nature Area and eventually dropped me down to Jewel Lake. Success!
Fitbit says I walked a total of 4 hours while up in the hills. For the day I made 12 miles and 199 flights of stairs. (Clearly my Fitbit gamification is beginning to fail me, because I didn't bother for that last fight to get my 14th Castle [200 floors] badge.)
There was one weird thing on the hike: I got up to the Island picnic area, and it was full of Porsches. There was apparently a Porsche convention, with people coming from all over the west to talk to other Porsche owners. And someone thought that the optimal place to worship wasteful spending and overprivileged living was a public park.
The cars were all sitting in the Island parking area, and about half of them had their hoods open or their trunks open or both. Some people had stuff sitting in their open trunks, which made it obvious they'd never been to Berkeley before, though the muggers and thieves don't usually make it up to Tilden. The cars all had signs in their windows identifying who the owner was, where he was from, and what model his car was. Meanwhile, the Porsche owners were sitting in the picnic area talking about their real leather seats and how infrequently they had to rebuild their engine. As I said: Weird.
There was a lot of up and down in my walk as I hit heights near Grizzly Peak and near Canyon Drive. My left knee started twinging was I was hiking down Memory Trail.
A lot of the trails in Tilden are becoming increasingly wild. Some have been "storm damaged" for years, others washed out by dripping pipes. Some of my early trails for the day were a wee bit overgrown, but Memory Trail was the worst because it had steps that look like they're maybe a foot and a half tall or so each. They've clearly expanded over time and they were all a muddy mess too. It was obvious that either no one has been back here to look at the state of the steps, or else they don't care. Anyway, as I hopped down those steps billy-goat like, that was when my knee really started to get going.
But I didn't think about it much at the time. Every once in a while when I'm on a big hike one of my knees starts twinging if I'm doing a big descent at the end. This was no different.
No different until I kneeled down Sunday morning, and I had some excruciating pain in that knee. Yowtch!
It was quite a surprise, and in retrospective I can only think of one reason that I might have particularly hurt things. I had lunch at the back of Strawberry Canyon where there's a nice bench in front of a stone wall, and I tend to sit on it sideways so that I can read or work ... with my left leg under me. So maybe I hurt the knee some then, then some more when climbing up and down hills.
Dunno. It didn't really dramatically, surprisingly hurt until Sunday morning. I guess I got something tight or inflamed or something and when I put all my weight on it kneeling down ....
So it's been mostly hurting for the last week, though I think maybe it's getting better. It's more feeling vulnerable and awkward now, rather than hurting.
I've stayed off hills for the last 10 days, and I didn't bike until last Friday. It seemed fine then. And fine for my Saturday gaming.
So apparently the biking is OK.
I'm hoping I'll be OK enough to hike on Saturday, though I may need to figure out somewhere that's not all hills.
So on Saturday, I choose a very challenging route: up around the fire trails above Strawberry Canyon (as usual) and then into TIlden. But from there I decided to walk the southwest side of Tilden, around Grizzly Peak, then to take the western most trails along the entire length of Tilden, until I got to Jewel Lake, which is the last civilized point in the north of Tilden, on the way to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park.
Most of these trails were new to me. Grizzly Peak Trail took me westward, and it was a nice trail running along a hillside, with the Wildcat Canyon to my right. It's the opposite side of the Canyon that I usually walk on. The only downside is that you could occasionally hear the cars whizzing by on Grizzly Peak Blvd., just the other side of the ridge. Then I walked Selby Trail northward for a few miles until I hit Canyon Drive, the big steep road coming out of the north side of Tilden. There was a bit of Selby Trail in the middle that was just ugly grassland, but most of it was wooded and very pleasant. Past Canyon Drive it became Memory Trail, which took me around the Nature Area and eventually dropped me down to Jewel Lake. Success!
Fitbit says I walked a total of 4 hours while up in the hills. For the day I made 12 miles and 199 flights of stairs. (Clearly my Fitbit gamification is beginning to fail me, because I didn't bother for that last fight to get my 14th Castle [200 floors] badge.)
There was one weird thing on the hike: I got up to the Island picnic area, and it was full of Porsches. There was apparently a Porsche convention, with people coming from all over the west to talk to other Porsche owners. And someone thought that the optimal place to worship wasteful spending and overprivileged living was a public park.
The cars were all sitting in the Island parking area, and about half of them had their hoods open or their trunks open or both. Some people had stuff sitting in their open trunks, which made it obvious they'd never been to Berkeley before, though the muggers and thieves don't usually make it up to Tilden. The cars all had signs in their windows identifying who the owner was, where he was from, and what model his car was. Meanwhile, the Porsche owners were sitting in the picnic area talking about their real leather seats and how infrequently they had to rebuild their engine. As I said: Weird.
There was a lot of up and down in my walk as I hit heights near Grizzly Peak and near Canyon Drive. My left knee started twinging was I was hiking down Memory Trail.
A lot of the trails in Tilden are becoming increasingly wild. Some have been "storm damaged" for years, others washed out by dripping pipes. Some of my early trails for the day were a wee bit overgrown, but Memory Trail was the worst because it had steps that look like they're maybe a foot and a half tall or so each. They've clearly expanded over time and they were all a muddy mess too. It was obvious that either no one has been back here to look at the state of the steps, or else they don't care. Anyway, as I hopped down those steps billy-goat like, that was when my knee really started to get going.
But I didn't think about it much at the time. Every once in a while when I'm on a big hike one of my knees starts twinging if I'm doing a big descent at the end. This was no different.
No different until I kneeled down Sunday morning, and I had some excruciating pain in that knee. Yowtch!
It was quite a surprise, and in retrospective I can only think of one reason that I might have particularly hurt things. I had lunch at the back of Strawberry Canyon where there's a nice bench in front of a stone wall, and I tend to sit on it sideways so that I can read or work ... with my left leg under me. So maybe I hurt the knee some then, then some more when climbing up and down hills.
Dunno. It didn't really dramatically, surprisingly hurt until Sunday morning. I guess I got something tight or inflamed or something and when I put all my weight on it kneeling down ....
So it's been mostly hurting for the last week, though I think maybe it's getting better. It's more feeling vulnerable and awkward now, rather than hurting.
I've stayed off hills for the last 10 days, and I didn't bike until last Friday. It seemed fine then. And fine for my Saturday gaming.
So apparently the biking is OK.
I'm hoping I'll be OK enough to hike on Saturday, though I may need to figure out somewhere that's not all hills.