It’s official. The left knee of an aging Al is going to require all sorts of external help, with the worrying possibility of being holed below the water line by a man with a drill. Deploying a displacement approach of “not asking a question you don’t want the answer to”, I’ve been avoiding doing anything about the increasing soreness for a few months now.

It’s always been a bit wonky. Made more so by that high speed impact with Chiltern flint, and a somewhat slower speed impact with a surgeon’s knife and much stitching. From then on, there was a low level background twinge, occasionally upgraded to a sharp “arrrghhh“.

Ironically, as my fitness has gone one way, the knee’s gone the other. And after a gentle commute home last night, I was pretty sure that any sort of riding was at the mercy of someone else’s diagnosis. Right now, that’s just the Physio and a bikey curfew which I am going to break. Unless it doesn’t improve, in which case it’ll be balancing a need to ride with the increasing likelihood of the aforementioned scary drill.

I’m understandably pissed off about it. Missing HONC after working so damn hard over the winter is one thing, the prospect of not being able to ride for … well … let’s not go there eh, has subdued even my normally optimistic – if naive – view of the world.

The only good to come out of this, is it has allowed someone else to participate who was desperate for a HONC entry, and he was good enough to chuck some cash at the CLIC-24 fund. That event is six weeks away, which doesn’t feel long enough.No way I’m missing that though. Even if I have to hop round.

If you’ll excuse me I’m going to go and drown my sorrows 🙁