Knee pain... where'd you go?

usafbeach

Back in 2010 I thought it'd be a good idea to run a marathon, so I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in DC. I trained for months and months, and was probably still a little unprepared for the race, but the big day came and I completed it. It was a remarkable experience and I've often considered doing it again.

Unfortunately, it left me with chronic pain in my left knee (Runners knee). Running was the only workout I ever did, and because of the pain I largely gave up running for nearly 2 years.

I recently started working out with P90x and following the nutrition plan, and I'm starting to see some nice results. But the result I'm most excited about is that the pain in my knee is slowly subsiding! Walking up and down stairs used to always cause pain; now I barely notice it. When I tried to run even short distances, the pain used to appear instantly, but again now it's hardly noticeable!

Runners knee has different causes, but it seems that mine was caused by weak thigh muscles (there are plenty of articles out there that can explain why; I can't as I'm not a doctor) because I didn't focus on cross training like I should have. Hopefully I'll get back into distance running again soon and I'll be sure to not make that mistake again!

mdearmond

This.

I started
training for a half marathon at the beginning of this year. For the first half of January things were great, I was running better than ever (I've always kept up with a bit of light running, 2 or 3 miles a day) but as I amped up my training schedule and started picking up mileage I ended up with ridiculous knee pain. To the point that I was crying just to walk. Afte going to the doctor and finding out it was my it band they told me the likely cause of all my issues was a lack of thigh and glute strength. Currently banned from running for at least two months and was told to stick to any cardio activities that didn't directly agitate my knee and to focus on squats, lunges, etc to build up my muscles before considering running again. Glad to see that it has made a huge difference for someone else though...makes me not regret taking all this time off from something that I love

Good luck!

Back in 2010 I thought it'd be a good idea to run a marathon, so I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in DC. I trained for months and months, and was probably still a little unprepared for the race, but the big day came and I completed it. It was a remarkable experience and I've often considered doing it again.

Unfortunately, it left me with chronic pain in my left knee (Runners knee). Running was the only workout I ever did, and because of the pain I largely gave up running for nearly 2 years.

I recently started working out with P90x and following the nutrition plan, and I'm starting to see some nice results. But the result I'm most excited about is that the pain in my knee is slowly subsiding! Walking up and down stairs used to always cause pain; now I barely notice it. When I tried to run even short distances, the pain used to appear instantly, but again now it's hardly noticeable!

Runners knee has different causes, but it seems that mine was caused by weak thigh muscles (there are plenty of articles out there that can explain why; I can't as I'm not a doctor) because I didn't focus on cross training like I should have. Hopefully I'll get back into distance running again soon and I'll be sure to not make that mistake again!

usafbeach

Good luck to you as well!