I DID try my usual standing quad stretch last night. I only did it once as I didn't work out yesterday, but wanted to see if it was possible to do it without any pain. I tried Oakleaf's suggestions about how to keep everything in alignment - though forgot to contract my quad. I did manage to do it once without any pain or twinges, and as I only tried it once I am pretty happy with that.

Thankfully the other leg/knee is fine - or at least it isn't bad enough to hurt. I am going to focus on good practices for that leg as well, it can't hurt!

Thankfully the Pennsaid topical I've been applying to the knee appears to be helping, so if I can be intentional about all of this then I should be able to progress with my planned spring "training" as I would really like to do a century on Memorial Day weekend in Kentucky....but the world won't end if I decide to do a metric instead.