I don’t know if this is an appropriate post, and many have probably asked the same sort of question to you, but here goes. Last cross country season, as I began, I had not done enough running over the summer. It felt better as I ran quicker, got into a rolling instead of a pounding pace, but it still hurt, and felt like a grinding. I ran short mileage, but never took a break. I got tendinitis in my knee. At least that’s what our school’s trainer said. He’s been wrong before-actually a lot. He told someone that needed to be hospitalized that they were confusion-free. I recovered, and near the end of the season, I was running a course with many potholes (it wasn’t a road, exactly, but had many pits where it would be easy to twist an ankle) by the end of the race, I was limping, had significant knee pain, I think it was my left knee, and hip pain from compensating. I don’t recall a specific moment when the injury occurred, but I suspect one of the many pits. I kept trying to practice, but eventually stopped and saw a chiropractor, because the pain wasn’t going away and it didn’t seem like I could help limping. Apparently I had really messed up my back and hips. Almost every season before this, even when I had been running, I had experienced knee pain. I’m now 16. Now it is track season, and I hadn’t run over the winter after being out of shape from the break I to take in order to heal-though last year I ran a half marathon. My sister, 18, and my dad, 44, both experience knee pain. Of course that’s normal for a large man of my dad’s age, but my sister doesn’t even run, the doctor suspects she was born with something wrong, and she runs with one of her feet pointed inward. I don’t do that, but like I said, the pain keeps returning. Anyway, before practice one day, I noticed that when I locked my knee or bent it back beyond a certain point, like with a quad stretch, it hurt bad. When I locked it, it hurt in the knee, when I bent it, it hurt my hamstrings too before my quads felt anything. It was completely fine otherwise. Oh well. I went ahead and ran six miles. That night I could barely walk, the pain was so great. I tried to lock my knee to see what that felt like, but I just couldn’t. I guess that could just be from fatigue, though. While I was wearing jeans I saw the trainer. He felt swelling below the patella, though most of the pain was at that point above the knee. It was very tender. I took two over-the-counter ibuprofen, I iced, and I took a warm bath, which might be counterproductive. None of this help at all at the time. I was literally crawling around. The next morning I felt way better. It shocked me. I still limped, but at least I could walk. I took a different dose of ibuprofen, one pill that we had from when my mom had broken her ankle and needed surgery but didn’t want to take anything possibly addictive. Pretty powerful prescription stuff, though I didn’t know it was any different at the time, my mom just said “take this.” As long as I didn’t move except when I had to, the pain was only an annoyance that day. I went and saw the trainer that day, and he told me it was ordinary muscle soreness, and had me do some stretches and roll than rolling pin thing hard over it. Sorry, I don’t know the real name. At this point I assumed I was just a wimp, but then I went to practice, with the same workout as everyone else, because I was apparently just sore. I was told to try to stop limping so I wouldn’t cause myself joint problems. It was terrible, but I finished (behind the girls team-luckily it was just a speed workout, so not sognificant mileage). I got home, took some more ibuprofen, and wrote this question. What do you think I did to myself? It sure doesn’t feel like ordinary muscle soreness. Or should I just toughen up?