Possible Solution to Knee Pain While Running

Ok, so we know flexibility is vitally important for over strength and fitness. It helps prevent injury, reduces stress on joints, all kinds of nice things. It may even buy you that pony you've been asking for since you were 4. But I found out this week that flexibility, poor flexibility at that, may be the source of my knee pain while running.

Let me set the stage with a little background into the problem. When I'm running or walking a long way, eventually I'll get an annoying pain along the outside of my knee. This will usually go away after I stop for a while and there's never any swelling or inflammation that I can see. Browsing the interwebs like I do pointed to a few sites that finally were able to clear it up. The problem is not in my knee, it's my Iliotibial Band, aka the IT Band.

Fitting, I know, for the IT guy at work to have IT Band issues, right? Sheesh. So this particular piece of you runs along the side of you from your hip to your knee. When, as in my case, the band is too tight, the friction of rubbing back and forth along the side of the knee causes pain after a while. Through a clever use of foreshadowing, you do, in fact, rightly know that flexibility is the answer to fixing this problem...provided you'd rather not have surgery.

IT Band Stretch

Sitting on the floor, legs straight out in front of you, cross the injured/annoying leg over the other, and pull your knee as close as you can to the opposite armpit

If you are currently among those that experience this kind of pain, you've got a stretching regimen ahead of you. Running Times has a lovely article on many stretches to help this problem. I've highlighted the stretch I use in the tip box. Plan on warming up and stretching at least 2 times per day, especially before and after running or walking. This won't be a quick fix--and I'm only on day 3 of it so I can't tell you just how long to expect--but barring an actual doctor's advice or intervention, this could help.

Start of week 40 is today, we'll see how the weight looks tonight.