good news! the runners knee pain that i was experiencing back in november is no longer an issue. i’ve been clocking in 13-14 miles and slowly building back up to 15/16 miles per week the past two weeks and i haven’t been experiencing any pain around my patella. granted, i’ve been mostly been using assault treadmills at the gym (i got a 1 month membership to avoid the ice and snow of december) so that’s lower impact but i’ve also been running harder than usual so maybe it cancels out. I did spend a couple of weeks before that outside too so there’s good reason to think i’m pretty well recovered.
the funny thing is i think the thing that actually helped me was taking an entire week off running and ONLY doing strength training instead of doing both low intensity running AND strength training (specifically ones for quad strength building and my adductors). trying to do both was not actually working for me – i don’t think it was enough for the inflammation around my knee to actually subside. i live in a very hilly area so in reality even though i was doing low intensity, slower pace running i think i was still putting too much load on my knees.
so there you go, taking an entire week off running and focusing only on rehabilitation exercises was what finally helped. anyway here’s to another year of hopefully injury free running in 2026, peace.