Nasty_Nadz wrote:
since yesterday, i've been feeling a sharp, shooting pain in my inner left leg below the knee. it doesn't hurt when i walk or jump, but i feel it when i lift my leg while running. i'm in the best shape of my life and my conference meet is two weeks away so i'll be racing through it.
cliffs: pain inner leg right below the knee.
- doesn't hurt when i walk
- sharp shooting pain when i bend it or lift my leg while running
- it's far from the heart so it won't keep me from racing my conference meet.
- I HAVE A HIGHER PAIN TOLERANCE THAN THE AVERAGE MAN
I actually had a very similar injury that began a few months ago. Occasionally when I began running there would be a sharp pain on the medial side of my knee. I'd stop, rub it, and carefully continue. It would always go away after a half mile or so. But then after running it would come back and give me a little limp in my walk.
I went on a business trip to Idaho, and I took an old pair of running shoes that I used only for treadmill running. I thought I'd just do an easy run on the hotel treadmill. However, it was such a beautiful day that I decided to run outside instead. (Bad idea--don't run with your old shoes that don't have cushion.) I ran about 5 miles, but it was all on cement because there were no fields, tracks or other softer off-road surfaces. The next morning I had to make a long drive home, and during that drive the knee really stiffened up and hurt a lot.
I went to see a doctor, despite knowing that a regular doctor probably wouldn't do a damn thing for me. But after x-rays (which showed nothing but a healthy looking knee), she had me move the knee joint in various directions. She said she was looking and feeling for "clicking" sounds. She said it was good that there were no "clicking" sounds because that might indicate some MCL damage (medial collateral ligament).
I took several weeks off, doing nothing but walking outside. The pain remained, but seemed to be easing after a couple of weeks.
I then went on a business trip to Lima, Peru. There, I went to the Adidas outlet store and bought my new Adidas Supernova Glide 6s with Boost.
Then my wife and I took a trip to Thailand.
During our Thailand trip, I read Pete McGill's book Building Your Running Body. Pete has some exercises in the book, including some injury specific exercises. One thing that Pete likes is the use of a "wobble board," which can help with issues of improper patella tracking. If the patella is even slightly offline when you run, it can cause some real problems. Well, I couldn't order a wobble board and have it sent to Thailand while I was there for a month, but I did do some things that made my injury completely disappear. First, my wife and I went to a spa and got a deep-tissue "aroma" massage. That's the first time I ever had this kind of massage. In the U.S., a two-hour massage like that will commonly cost you anywhere from 150-200 dollars, but in Thailand it costs less than 20 dollars. It was FANTASTIC. When I left the spa I felt more relaxed than I had felt in years. One really good thing the masseuse did was loosen my hamstrings and hips. You wouldn't think that tight hamstrings and hips would affect the knee, but they sure do.
Second, I began walking/jogging easily every other day, with most of it on dirt roads and the bumpy grass around a Thailand high school soccer field. Gradually I increased the running and decreased the walking until I was running four miles a day, with NO pain.
I think the massage loosened a lot of built-up tension. But what I think really helped was the soft but uneven grass and dirt road surfaces I was running on. Like Pete's wobble board exercises, this kind of surface gently stretched and strengthened my knees. Oh, and I can't resist adding that all of my running was with those Adidas with Boost midsoles.
Now that I'm back home, I've been running five miles a day with no pain at all. So I went from a scary situation where I thought I might need arthroscopic knee surgery to completely healed. I wish you the best, too.