[justin__m__303]

Last Thursday my right knee started hurting in the evening, 6-7 hrs after a run. It’s not a constant pain, only when I go up or down stairs or attempt weight bearing exercises. It really reminds me of when you have a heavy squat session and you get that tenderness where your quads meet the knee and then just below and to the outside edge of the kneecap. Running and walking don’t seem to impact it negatively. I did a 16mi trail run on Saturday with 3200′ of gain and it didn’t bother me during the run at all.

Could it be patellar tendonitis? Stiffness? Overuse? Something else? I have experienced sore knees in the past from lifting and hard runs, but it was always very obvious what the cause was.

This is a reduced volume week for me, so I’ll be taking it easier, but I can’t do any weightlifting with my right leg. 🙁 Should I just take it easy and see if gets better?

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on March 14, 2017 at 4:32 pm #4265

Justin:
Never try to train through joint pain. You have a medical/health related problem and until you deal with that you will not be able to train to full effectiveness and may exacerbate the issue resulting in more lost training time in the future.

Pain lateral to the patella and especially below the patella can often be caused by a tight IT band. This is really common among runners. The IT band attaches to the tibia just below the knee cap and so the pain can feel like patella tendonitis when in fact the problem is far removed from the knee itself. The origin of the IT band is in the lateral hip area just below the iliac crest. Aggressively rolling out this area and the full lateral side of the thigh with a lacrosse ball or a foam roller several times a day for a few days will usually give relief to this kind of knee pain (if this is the source of it). Once you get on top of this issue you’ll want to do preventive rolling. If when you roll the IT band (or any muscle) it is excruciatingly painful then you can be pretty sure you have found the problem.

In my experience tight IT bands are the most common cause of knee pain in runners.

I hope this helps.
Scott

[justin__m__303]

justin__m__303 on March 15, 2017 at 8:16 am #4267

Thank you Scott. I suspect that is the root cause of my pain. I rolled for about 30 minutes last night, focusing primarily on the painful side and it did give me quite a bit of relief. I need to remind myself to spend more time rolling daily.

Your explanation is the best yet. I searched for answers before posting my question and most pointed to tendonitis for whatever reason.

Again, thank you very much for the reply and guidance. I’m off to roll some more.

Justin