If it's not one thing, it's another...part 2

Today's run was 7 miles before work.  The first half, as usual, was with the wind at my back; I felt absolutely fine.  I stopped at the half-way point to stretch a bit before heading home and, even though I was running into the wind I still felt okay.  I was a bit slower than on the way out, but wasn't struggling nearly as much as yesterday.

All was good until mile 6.  The bit of road at that point has quite a steep camber and I wasn't able to immediately cross to the other side as I normally do (where it is flatter) because of traffic coming each way.  I should have just stopped and waited.  Instead, I carried on and out of the blue felt a strong cramp/pain in the back and to the outside of my left knee.  That made me stop.  I stretched a bit and walked briefly and it settled down, and I was able to run the rest of the way home with no pain or stiffness.

This didn't really happen to me.  But it could have.

The outside back of my knee twice cramped up while I was getting ready for work to the extent that it hurt to put weight on it.  And the same thing happened again at work while I was just walking across the room.  I had errands to run in town and was able to walk with no pain (but quite gingerly and slowly, in case there was pain) for 45 minutes or so.   However, I also noticed that the very minor hamstring niggle that's been there for the past week or so was feeling a lot more major.

When I got home from work, I immediately iced and then put a compression bandage over the offending areas.  I used The Stick and did some gentle stretching.  And, of course, I looked on-line in a self-diagnostic flury of panic.  Based on various anatomical drawings, I figure that this is either an unhappiness of the biceps femoralis (one of the hamstring muscles) or a grumpiness of the popliteal tendon/muscle (a back-of-the-knee muscle).  Both of which seem to require NO RUNNING to heal. 

I see Claudio on Thursday; I suspect that he will roll his eyes at me again when I present him with yet another injury.  I'm meant to run 4 miles tomorrow but I think I'll give it a miss or, depending on how I feel in the morning, go to the gym and use the the stationary bike instead.  Hopefully, by Thursday this will all have settled down.  But I'm not happy tonight.  Not happy at all.