I took about 2 weeks off from running at the beginning of July and then started to kick it back up. No long runs or anything. Didn't change my shoes which only have about 150 miles on them. Over the last month, I've been having knee pain all across the front of my knee during my runs. Also when I do lunges or squats. Backed everything down to running a couple miles 2x per week and the knee pain is still there.

The only real change is that I started playing soccer again for the first time in 5 months and that my cleats don't really have any support like my running shoes do. I've already decided to drop any races for the next couple months and plan on just getting on a bike for the cardio since there is no pain with it. Plan to give it a couple weeks without running and focus on stretching, foam rolling and light strength work around the joint. Trying to avoid seeing an ortho.

Any advice?

I have generally stayed free of knee pain over the years until I started incorporating plyometric type exercises earlier this year. Once I self diagnosed it, (who knows what was really caused it) I took it easy for a few days until it subsided. It did motivate me to try harder to drop some LBs. I figured the heavier I was the harder it was on my knees, so why not help my knees out.

I know a neighbor's daughter was complaining about knee pain, she plays a lot of sports, and the doc told her it was overuse. He wanted her to take it easy for a full week and if she still felt the pain, to wear braces during the sports activities. Good luck.

I had runners knee throughout my marathon training cycle last year. I ended up skipping some midweek runs to recover from my long runs.

For this cycle, I did a better job at gradual base building and focused on shortening my stride...I have not had any runners knee pain in a couple months. However, it it comes back, I will be more diligent about going to Dr and PT.