The knees have been feeling rubbish in recent days, for no reason I can readily discern. I haven't stepped up the distance or the frequency of my rides - if anything the opposite - so I can only wonder if insufficient exercise is making them feel worse? The left one feels like someone's kicked it with a steel toecap and the right one feels like it's been knifed.
Anyway I thought I'd see how 18 miles or so felt. Took the X, as standing water from yesterday's rain was minimal and I still haven't lubed the first Boardman. Did a short version of the Twycross, as usual. Perhaps I'll do the old Belton Figure Of Eight next time.
Felt alright. Certainly riding a bike didn't make them feel any better, but they didn't seem to get much worse. I'll be interested to see how they are tomorrow.
Not too cold. Sunny. Stopped at the Gibbet Post bench for a few minutes.

Shortly after this photo was taken I set about the task of removing some of the moss you can see on the bench - it peeled off in big, dry scabby clumps. Quite therapeutic.
I took one of my Garmin watches in addition to the Soleus watch, with the intention of running them in tandem to compare recorded distances - to confirm my suspicion that the Soleus exaggerates. But when I tried to switch the Garmin on, I realised its battery was flat. So I used Strava on my phone instead. Results as follows:
Phone : 18.09 miles
Soleus : 18.46 miles
So assuming the phone is right, which I suspect it is, my Soleus watch has confected .37 miles out of nowhere - quite a lot over 18 miles or so. Comparing the two tracks, the phone track is slightly smoother - probably because the recording frequency is higher - and a comparison of file sizes between the two exported GPX files bears this out (592k (phone) vs 384k (Soleus watch)).
Anyway for now I will keep doing 15-20 miles every 2 or 3 days, or an equivalent effort on the trainer. And I'll just have to hope that things improve, and I can do long rides again next year.