repeated pain for me turned out to be a torn medial meniscus.

If the pain is on the outsideo the knee, it could be ITB.

Either way, it is probalby connective tissue related (not, I am not an orthopedists but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Exprss last night). the joke only to point out that you are dealing with you own health and should seek licensed care.

If connective tissue related (muscles adapt to training stress first, connective tissue last), then back off on the stress, take more rest days and rebuild the volume (total weekly mileage) and stress (pace or individual run distance) more slowly.

hdh

I have had 3 knee issues in the past 20 years. All three were taken care of differently.

First was 20yrs ago in the army. My knee would swell, feel really tight and hurt. Knee surgery was recommended, but as a last ditch effort to avoid it, I tried custom arch supports and had no more issues

Second was a couple years back. At that time I was running and biking a lot and developed a pain that felt like someone was driving a nail into my knee. Turned out to be IT Band/Quad tightness which was pulling on the ligaments/tendons attached to the knee. At the recommendation of another runner, 5 minute deep quad massage and focused stretching helped over a couple weeks. Dig your thumbs into your quads for sensitive areas, if you find some try the above.

Third time was a year and a half ago. I had an interior tear to the medial miniscus (MRI showed it). The sport medicine orthopedist I went to was supposedly the best in town and oddly enough he had me run through it - which worked over a couple painful weeks. I DO NOT recommend this blindly. His told me that since he knew the problem, if running didn't fix it, he would just end up doing the same surgery anyway. He said 10% of the cases running through it worked. Again I DO NOT recommend doing this blindly.

Hopefully my second challenge is yours as well, and focused massage/stretching will work for you also.

God Luck

On the topic of knee pain - I was suffering a similar (well aren't all pains similar to a point?) problem that after I ran my knee swelled up and hurt for a day or two, but I could definitely still walk on it. After jumping from doctor to doctor, an orthopedic nurse practitioner told me it was bio-mechanical and recommended me to an orthoticist. Turned out that due to several previous injuries and genetic quirks the bones in my left leg/foot are not aligned correctly and my left leg is about 1.5 cms longer than my right... All of the uneven pronation and strides was causing swelling in the knees, quite similar to IT related problems. A good (and unfortunately costly) pair of orthotics and some cross training, and I am good as new. I have not been running this fast since I was 19...

If the standard x-rays/mri doctor routines do not indicate that your meniscus is torn, etc, then go see a good orthoticist or someone who can diagnose your gait... It may be as simple as you are just in the wrong shoes...

Either way, good luck...

I've had this ongoing pain - I'm 38 and was told it sounds like my pain is due to osteo arthritis - so I got synvisc injections - and that didn't help - now I'm told it possibly may be because the mechanical dynamics of my knee joint is not genetically engineered so there is off friction pain due to genetically mis-alignment - and was told that orthotic shoe inserts may do the trick!!! So, I am hopeful and was recommended to try Phase 4 orthotic shoe inserts to align my knee joint so I won't have the continuous knee pain problem... Now, if I can only find the Phase 4 orthotic shoe inserts - they are hard to find...

Sorry-wrong forum! I have been kept awake 3 nights in a row by my scum neighbors. I'm not thinking clearly.