In mid late November I started experiencing pain in both my knees (one might hurt more than the other day to day) after upping my mileage from 30s to 50s. It was annoying but went away during the run. It was like this until late December when at the end of a long run my left knee started hurting more sharply, I tried to finish it but couldn’t. The day after I tried to run/bike and both hurt my left knee, but I was able to do the elliptical for the next 2 days. Stupidly after that I decided to run 7 miles and felt fine during the run but my left knee hurt a ton after. At this point I was limping because it hurt to bend my knee back at all. I cross trained for about a week after that but didn’t notice it getting much better so decided to take real rest. After a few days of that I bought a knee brace and was actually able to run again and did about 40 miles for the week. My left knee was not 100% but getting better. However the next week I started to notice pain in my right knee more so than my left. I didn’t think much of it but it got to the point where it was basically the same as my left knee before. I had to take a week off for unrelated reasons and hoped that would be what I need to get over all of this but today was my first run back and while it felt fine during the day, hurt basically as much as last week during and after the run.
The pain I had at the start on both knees was in the front and in and around the kneecap. I wouldn’t have the range of motion to do a quad stretch and it would hurt to sit with my knees in a bent position for a long time. The worse pain I had on my left knee was basically what I described*10 and was fairly debilitating. From what I looked at I might have had patellar tendinitis, runners knee, or both. The pain I recently developed on my right knee is different in that I can sit and bend my knee fairly normally during the day but during and after my run it hurts much more and resembles what I had before.
As for the root causes, I do not think strength is the problem as I have decent legs and have been doing strengthening exercises during and before this. But if anyone has any specific movements I would listen. I’ve videoed myself running and do not heel-strike/over-stride. Old shoes could be an issue because I’ve probably put in 500+ miles in some cheap ASICS but they don’t look damaged/old and feel fine, not to mention I hurt my right knee in new Nike reacts and they feel much more awkward to run in. I might overpronate but it’s hard to tell through video and I don’t understand the explanation.
tldr; I’ve injured both of my knees now and I have no clue why. Please help!