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Ha! Not quite that old. Assuming you're young and think riding hard doesn't take its toll until that age, you're gonna be pretty disappointed in your mid- and late 40s.
Just givin' you shit. I related hard when you said it warms your knees up.
I'm 41 and have had a pile-of-shit ankle since I was 14 because of a "run it off" coach when I definitely had a huge problem because of a fuckin' asshole of a teammate intentionally trying to hurt me during football practice (sidebar: that guy ended up signing for the Jets, breaking his femur, and getting dropped so I guess karma reared its head eventually).
The ankle is supposed to have 10º-15º of knees-over-toes-direction flex (can't remember what it's called)...mine has less than 4º and has had that range of motion for years. Currently doing a lot of physical therapy to try to get some more movement back. I continually had injury after injury after injury of that ankle after that football injury, even from just stepping onto a slightly-off-level surface, so I didn't know if my lack of motion and general garbage feel was because it was always recovering from the constant injuries or if it was longer-term messed up. Doctors told me my ankle X-rays looked like I was 70. I was always working on it to try to get it strong enough to resist the next injury and it never could. So I just lived with a shit ankle. After a bunch of physical therapy, it still sprains/rolls/tweaks fairly easily - not as bad as before - but it hurts less in my day-to-day use. That's a huge win.
...also 15 years of riding street/ramp bmx had me at 30 feeling repetitive use injuries in my arms forcing me to quit riding bikes of almost any sort for 8 years at which point I just refused to not ride bikes any longer. That "tennis elbow"-style injury in my forearms (from pulling/flexing while grasping the bars) were bad enough that it had messed up my biceps. I was able to just deal with my ankle being sore and prone to rolls/tweaks but also losing the ability to use either of my arms for any sort of push or pull was the last straw for my life on bikes for that time period.
I feel better now than I have in years, to be honest. Taking a bunch of time off of gripping handlebars helped. It sucked. I thought about riding bikes every day and assumed I just wouldn't be able to aside from some rare commuter rides. One day my brain goes "hey, mountain bikes seem cool, right? It looks like it wants to be fast and flowy. Not as hard of surfaces so not as jarring to your arms. Try it." I rented a bike the first opportunity I had, loved it, and here we are now. No new problems. Old problems are better than they used to be. Life is much better but I'm sore, for sure!
Ouch. Definitely gotta keep moving.
I sympathize on the holding onto the bars. Got some combo of neck / brachial plexus / A/C joint been separated too many times I'm trying to sort out. My line is that the question is no longer "whether to have surgery," but "which surgery to have first."
To wrap this up and bring it back before we rightly get told to go start our own "which joints let you know when it's going to rain" thread, how lucky are we to have todays bikes? Can you imagine riding the bikes of 20 or even 10 years ago? And for this thread in particular, trail riding without a dropper? And how nice is the longer rear center and higher stack trend? Even though it's easy to complain about some of the things the industry does, there's an awful lot to be grateful for.
Um, so yeah. Most of us rode those bikes from 10, 20, 30, even 40 years ago….. Your Mom know your up this late?? (I be giving you shit.)
another with bad ankles here, years of been a baseball catcher caught up to me. Basically my left one just doesn't work anymore and the ligaments are MIA. It causes these micro dislocations that cause severe discomfort. To quote the ortho surgeon who took a look at it "it looks like an Iraqi car bomb went off in there" when a doctor says that to you, you know you're fkd lol
I run a 210mm OneUp, some days it feels like a LOOOONG way down when I need to get back to standing. I never have an issue snagging my pants with smaller drops, I ride quite upright.
Bad Ankle Crew: We Bend to No One™
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