HELP! I have Runner's Knee

I have never dealt with runner's knee, but let me share you a personal experience with running through pain from high school (quite a while ago for me now). Believe it or not, I was a decent runner in high school. I regularly ran well under 16:00 for 5k and even popped off a few 5ks that were pretty close to that magical 15:00 mark. My junior year of track began with posting PRs in the 800m and 1600m at a jamboree where I ran largely alone after the beginning of each race. While running the 3200m at that meet (my coach was a nut and had me triple that jamboree because he thought it would be a good opportunity to set benchmarks, whatever), I developed pain in my lower left leg. I ran through it and spoke with coach afterward. Not wanting to forgo a potentially great year in which recruiters were starting to look at me, we decided that I would ice it and run through it. I kept on running and eventually began popping ibuprofen before each run to help with the pain. I could manage to make it through workouts like that. I went to visit a doctor after a while who told me to take a few weeks off and aqua jog or swim to maintain cardiovascular fitness if it was that important to me. I didn't pay attention and kept running on it. Eventually, in a year that I was posting some of the top times in the state in the 800m and 1600m, I developed a stress fracture that ended my season and sidelined me for months.

Moral of the story: Listen to your doctor! My situation is a bit extreme because I had a lot of indicators that I should have backed off earlier, but you have no idea what the consequences of trying to tough it will be. The consequences of momentary stupidity can be very long term and harmful.

Besides, you are not without options. You can aqua jog and focus on your other disciplines to improve them while you recover. Then, you can always go in for a reevaluation in a few months. To see if the doctor would like to reevaluate that time table.

Sorry for the length

I trained through and ran a marathon. These things helped me heal:

1. exercises to strengthen my quads (wall squats, leg lifts with weights, etc.) these were given to me by the Physical Therapist.

2. The chopat strap mentioned above. This really helped me. REALLY.

3. $600 worth of PT (exercises, massages, taping)

4. ice and ibuprofen after regular runs. Ice baths after hard runs.

5. Immediately after my mary I decreased my mileage significantly to about 15 mpw and very slowly built back up.

All in all, it took about 5 months for me to be able to run pain free without the use of the strap, but once I was over it, I've never had any other patellar tendonitis problems... *knocking on wood*

Once again, YMMV. This is just what happened to me. I was not going to give up my mary, which was also with Team in Training.

Yes Ive been there too.... some of the steps I took were:

1. Learning how to strap the knee cap (with strapping tape) so it would track properly all the time (I would change the tape every few days)

2. Pt exercises... starting with clam shells and bridges before moving up to squats, one legged squats and lunges as I improved my knee tracking... I dont engage my glutes generally either so that needed work!

3. STRETCHING... part of what pulls my knee cap out of alignment is not just over/under developed muscles but tight muscles pulling out my leg tracking

4. Custom Orthotics: anything that throws out my running form is bad so having these was something that I noticed made a major improvement

5. Bike fit/new cleats: I found for me changing cleats to increase float and getting a change in fit took pressure off my knees so they were no longer being aggravated by riding a bike

I didnt get back into running for quite awhile but I also didnt have a goal like one you are aiming for either

Good Luck!

I was recently told I had this again.  I had issues several years ago and went to a lot of physio with no relief.  Previously, it resolved itself (I wasn't a runner then).

This time, I happened to mention it to my chiropractor while we were chatting and he did ART on my knee/leg.  It only took 3 treatments and for him to show me some very specific stretches and I was pain free.

Just a thought on a different course of treatment, if you have ART available to you.