Dog agility and a knee injury

It took me three weeks to recover from the flu. In early March, I finally felt good enough to take my dog to our weekly agility training class. I had at that time, not started my own training. I had forgotten about the previous knee problems, was just happy to have enough energy to go out.

I do compete with my Miniature Schnauzer in dog agility at hobby level. Each dog agility run is less than a minute long but sometimes involves quite vigorous running with sharp turns. Second training run with the dog broke my knee injury up again. I now realize that the dog agility has probably been the source of the knee problem all along. There are too much sideways movements.

Back to square one. I started swimming and biking with no problems but had to avoid all running. It was difficult to even walk. My shape was way below what I could do last year. 

At the beginning of April, I started using an elliptical which seemed to help. I then increased the load on the legs to about 8 minutes run on a treadmill a few times. Then it was a 1km run outdoors, longer treadmill runs on higher speed etc. Now, at the end of April, I can run up to 5km. My times are improving but are below what I could do last year. Swimming seems to be a little faster than last year, probably because I have spent more time on swimming. I am not sure where I stand in biking, probably slower than last year but still ok. The knee is mostly ok, but occasionally I feel pain, I have to be careful.

I continue with dog agility, but with a knee brace. That works.