I’ve been doing some gentle running to keep moving when I don’t have time to ride, but I’m having a bit of pain in my knee afterwards.

It’s an ache on my right leg, on the left hand side of my knee, right on the joint.

Is it just a case of getting some decent shoes and my gait checked out?

Possibly, but probably not.

Most runnners’ knee pain isn’t caused by the knee – it’s caused by weakness in calves, quads or hips.

This is a useful read:
https://runnersconnect.net/running-injury-prevention/runners-knee-symptoms-causes-and-research-backed-treatment-solutions-for-patellofemoral-pain-syndrome/

A visit to a sports physio might be £60 well spent!

Patella tendonitis was what I struggled with. And I have just got a place in the London Marathon so I have started by getting some core fitness training under my belt (ie, getting the strength around my knees etc).

just don’t bother running?

Its not uncommon for muscles to develop at different rates and if you are cyclist you probably have well developed quads. This may mean you kneecap is not sliding smoothly (tech term) and your other muscles around the knee may be overworked as they are weaker. There are a number of exercises you can do to develop the other muscles a little. Try straight leg then pull your toe up towards your shin. It will ache after a little while, relax then repeat as much as you can. May help

Pook – Member
I’ve been doing some gentle running…

great, how gentle is ‘gentle’?

(if you’re new to running, and using it as a time-efficient alternative to cycling, there’s a good chance you’re going waaaaaay too hard, and if i’m right, you live in/near Sheffield, which means there’s probably some hills involved…)

I’ve been struggling with this too.
Signed up for one of these tough mudder things with a friend who was doing it by herself. It’s 15km.
I haven’t done any jogging in about 10 years.
Cycling and cardio fitness is great, but I can only run a few hundred yards before having to stop because of knee pain.
To be fair, I have a torn posterior cruciate ligament and while that hurts, I also get bands of pain at the bottom front of my thighs on both sides.
I think it’s to do with the way your muscles build up from cycling. Always the same movements, always longitudinal, nothing side to side or with impact.

Guess I just need to keep plugging away and getting my knees used to it. Race is early January though so not sure if I’ll be able to do it. Might be a 15km walk.

Gentle gentle. 2-3 miles over about 20 minutes. Not caning it on the hills at all really, I’m at the top near Lodge Moor!

The pain is a real intense sharpness in the joint. The rest I can tell is just ‘not used muscles’ aches and pains. This feels more.

I’ll try to build it up a bit with some of this advice 🙂

Are you off road or on?
Quite a few years ago when I was getting knee pain I found sticking to off-road helped reduce the pounding on the knee joints.
This was after a lay off and helped get muscles/joints better accustomed to running again before heading back out on the pavements.

Pook – Member
Gentle gentle. 2-3 miles over about 20 minutes.

5k in 20mins? over/up/down* the rolling hills of lodge moor? imho that’s too far, and too fast (and it seems some small, but important, bits of your knee agree with me). 5k in 20mins is a goal for a new runner, not a starting point.

(*down is brutal, a really good way to jigger yourself)

living in Sheffield has distorted your opinion of what counts as a ‘hill’. cycling in Sheffield has distorted your opinion of ‘gentle’.

give your knee a day or 2 to rest, and try a shorter run, avoiding (or walking) any steep descents, and see how it goes. build slowly from there…

2 miles in 20 minutes might be called gentle, 3 miles in 20 minutes is pretty full on if you’re not used to running.

I’ve had various running issues. Some of the issues were, weak glute medius, a rough nerve glide, weak arches and poor pelvis alignments.

I also didn’t do myself any favours when I started as I ran with a beginner’s legs but a cyclists cv system.

2 miles in 20 minutes might be called gentle, 3 miles in 20 minutes is pretty full on if you’re not used to running.

This

I did my first training run for my marathon attempt next year just last night – 1.5 miles in 15 minutes. Will do the same on Wednesday (assuming I don’t have any aches) then again on Saturday. Next week I will go up to 2 miles and aim to be up to 4 mile runs by Christmas.

It is vitally important to take things slowly.

So I’m ok in my clogs then?

Yeah, yeah, clogs are good. Just don’t run at night, you’ll wake all the babies in the ‘hood.

I switched my shoes at the wrong point of training for the Berlin marathon this year and developed knee pain.

After seeing a physio he said the cause was (a) switching shoes (b) over striding (c) my weak glutes.

When doing single leg squats it was apparent how my knees didn’t track properly, so had to squat and ensure my knees didn’t rotate inwards, I had resistance band exercises and doing bridges to build up the glutes.

I was reduced to a 5k limit at a very slow pace, then down to run a mile walk a minute still within the 5k limit. Although my knees have now improved, I can now gradually increase my mileage which is frustrating as I’ve lost all my speed and gained a bit of excess weight, so things like parkrun are 2-3 minutes slower than what I was knocking out last year.

As my training was so far behind the physio said I was better off not running the Berlin marathon.

It’s an ache on my right leg, on the left hand side of my knee, right on the joint.

As above, sounds like Runners’ Knee. I have a similar thing and have just started exercises to help sort out. Running also highlighted under-developed glutes too, so doing them as well. Well worth seeing a professional.

Should add – run purely off-road. Running on-road brings on old glutes-related calf injuries in double-quick time.

And to think it’s meant to be a simple sport. 😉

Is it just a case of getting some decent shoes and my gait checked out?

If you want to believe a load of marketing folk, and someone being paid very little in a shop then go ahead.

If you want to know what is wrong, disregard everyone above and go and see a physio.

Why do people insist on running around when Nature gave us the brains to invent bicycles and ride them?

Running is terribly stressful on joints and muscles and it will take your joints a year or two to catch up with the new stresses.

If you want to believe a load of marketing folk, and someone being paid very little in a shop then go ahead.

If you want to know what is wrong, disregard everyone above and go and see a physio.

This! Is it a sharp intense pain on the outside of the knee? Possibly IT band, go and see a physio, do lots of squats to strengthen your glutes.

Is it a sharp intense pain on the outside of the knee?

It’s on the inside.

Physio would be a good starting point, he/she will probably recommend rest, ice, then leg strengthening and stretching.

Why do people insist on running around when Nature gave us the brains to invent bicycles and ride them?

Cos running’s more fun than riding, maybe? 🙂

Cos running’s more fun than riding, maybe?

maybe in a parallel universe…

I, err, like both.

I also like football.

Rubber segs on thi clogs ! Don’t run on tram lines tha meight slip an pull thi back art !

oh crikey, this is a how long is a piece of string question.

i’ve been nailed all year since the beginning of summer for running, i had exactly the same the year before, but the more i look the more confused i get. its really knocked a hole in my fitness, hence i’ve come back to cycling really.

the reality is that i should go see a sports specfic physiotherapist.

but, what i have found is…

sports tape can help, the best value i’ve used is the actual brand sportstape. cheap stuff is rubbish.

at the moment i’m trying a patella band, 2quid off ebay, that seems to be good.

i have to keep my knees warm.

don’t, and this is a hard one for me as i always do as its out my door, run on hills. i’ve been driving 10mins in order to run a dead flat 3-5mile and am ok so long as i don’t push it.

i’ve started taking glucosamine and cod liver oil again, seems to be helping.

i also think i need to phase in shoes, i tend to nail a pair then go straight into something different.

finally look for other reasons. i think, and i only realised this a few weeks back, is that the knee i suffer with is the one that stays on the deck when i step down from my workshop, often carrying a load of heavy wood. i used to have a car with a dodjy handbrake, as long as i had that car i had tennis elbow in my left arm, couldnt do push ups, within weeks of selling it the elbow was fine. think its the same sort of thing for me with my knee.

good luck though because its a pain (excuse the pun) for your knees to play up when you want to run.

at the moment i’m trying a patella band, 2quid off ebay, that seems to be good.

I used to use one of those – and I wouldn’t advise it, other than as a stopgap if you’ve got some particularly important race coming up. It’s not a treatment for the underlying cause, and will just prolong the injury.

I can’t say what definitively sorted mine out, but a combination of stretching, doing some weights, pilates, and running faster/lighter seems to have worked.

If you want to know what is wrong, disregard everyone above and go and see a physio.

Did you read the posts by everyone above?

Running is good for your bones, especially when you get to Pooks age. It will help increase bone density so work sticking with.

And to think it’s meant to be a simple sport.

So easy to get this wrong, there is a lot of technique to running.

Watch people run a while, watch the path of their foot through a stride, watch that it does to their knees, watch where they land on their foot and their relative body position above their joint, i.e. the leading knee. Watch their arms and upper body. There is loads of mechanics in running, easy to do, easier to do badly.

I’m a bit of a process geek so technique is really interesting to me.

Fastest guy I know has the bandiest legs and runs really flat footed, it really shouldn’t work, but his marathon record is 2:44. However, he’s also currently injured, mechanically he was faster than his joints could sustain in my uneducated opinion.

Also, best thing a physio ever said to me was “you are over flexible, don’t ever attempt a marathon, you’ll fall apart” which is good as 5-10k is enough for me.

It might be your feet.

My knee pain was traced back to collapsing arches on my feet messing up the alignment of everything else that manefest as knee pain. Orthotic insoles was my solution

If you want to know what is wrong, disregard everyone above and go and see a physio.

Thats actually very bad advice. Many Phyios are generalists and you could be the first customer with a sports injury that month. I have met very well “qualified” Physios which with hindsight offered poor advice and met relatively un qualified sports masseurs who have years of sport specific experience and have diagnised and treated injuries very accurately.
I am unqualified but could probably give quite well informed and limited advice around a number of running related injuries. Most likely more accurately than many qualified physios who may spend his/her days treating old people with shoulder injuries for example.
Dont dismiss the well intentioned on here out of hand.

Where to start…..

Tight glutes / hamstrings (stretch them) could be the culprit.

Isometric single leg squats could be usful.

Clams as well…

Ibuprofen and Ice.

And phyiso’s are a mixed bag with a mixed approach. I here as many good / bad reports about all the popular physio’s in Sheffield that circulate round our running club. After seeing enough physio’s about enough injuries, you’ll eventually stumble across a number of conditioning exercises tailored to your own biomechanics that will sort you out.

Some physio’s that I have seen are The White House, Kim Baxter, and Fit4 Physio, Hallam Physiotherapy.

Ibuprofen and Ice.

Steady with the NSAIDs … there is *some* evidence to suggest that continued use of NSAIDs can slow healing and also *may* cause kidney damage/dehydration in hill running. Although this has been shown to be in ‘endurance running’ it’s still worth exercising caution.

It’s an ache on my right leg, on the left hand side of my knee, right on the joint

As others have said it’s hard to diagnose/come up with suggestions as your description is a bit vague, however I would definitely suggest seeing a Physio – try ‘The Physios’ next to the Hallamshire Hospital or one of the others suggested above.

Not sure it sounds like ‘Patella Tendonitis’ … this frequently causes pain underneath the knee cap – if you dangle your leg off a chair with your foot off the floor and feel directly underneath your knee-cap – the tendon you can feel is the patella tendon.

It might be a tight ITB – this is very common in cyclist along with tight hip flexors. Tight ITB can cause the patella tendon to be pulled off to one side and stop it ‘tracking’ correctly leading to inflammation/pain.

If the pain is at the actual side of the knee then it could be your Medial collateral ligament (MCL) and/or meniscus :
one legged knee dips and balance/wobble board exercises would help build up strength but I would suggest a visit to a *Sports* Physio in the first instance.

While we are all assembled . Would running on pavements be much harsher for your joints than running on gravel tracks? The kind that you would find on a family friendly cycle track?
Twisted my ankle running through the woods so thought I would stick to running where it’s flat.
I’ve run once a week and it hurts my right hip flexor. Normally it’s knee or ankle problems that I suffer from.
The only thing that’s changed is running on pavements as opposed to gravel paths and woods.

. Would running on pavements be much harsher for your joints than running on gravel tracks?

Personally I find running on pavements & tarmac much harsher, so try and avoid it as much as possible. Also pavements are frequently ‘cambered’ towards the road so you can sometimes end up running a bit ‘lopsided’ for extended periods if you aren’t careful with your route.

While we are all assembled . Would running on pavements be much harsher for your joints than running on gravel tracks?

Intuitively yes but I am not sure the evidence bears this out. I think the injury and soreness rates are pretty much the same. Running off road can be more fun but the hard surface/soft surface thing is a myth. A bit like stretching.

is a myth. A bit like stretching.

Really? So recommended physio exercises, yoga, stretching / increased flexibility etc are all a myth?

Really? So recommended physio exercises, yoga, stretching / increased flexibility etc are all a myth?

In terms of its ability to avoid/aid recovery from injury, yes.

HTH

By myth I think you mean “no hard evidence supporting it” exists. Not quite the same.

Digby – Member

Really? So recommended physio exercises, yoga, stretching / increased flexibility etc are all a myth?

that’s not even close to what was said.

there really isn’t much evidence that says stretching helps reduce the chance of injury.

I’m probably going to regret arguing semantics … but:

Yoga = stretching
Recommended Physio Exercises = stretching