I hurt my left foot during the 2011 Honolulu Marathon around mile twenty-one. I was limping a bit, but managed to finish with a bone bruise on the outer-edge of the bottom of my left foot. I went to a podiatrist (Dr. Gregory Morris, who is pretty good), and he prescribed rest for a couple of weeks, NSAIDs, and icing.

After waiting until my foot healed-up, I went out on short runs again, but started to feel pain in my left knee after running variable distances. Sometimes the pain would appear after the 2-mile mark, other times I could make it to 4 miles before any pain kicked in. I always stopped running once the pain hit, and walked the rest of the way. I applied ice to my knee as soon as I got home and took Advil to help reduce any swelling. I rested whenever any pains started, and did other things like go on the elliptical at the gym, or watched huge amounts of British television (Luther, Sherlock, Downton Abbey, Misfits)!

By February, it’d been almost two months, so I visited Dr. Elizabeth Ignacio, who was really nice and helpful. I wish I could remember the name of the resident working with her, because she was also very nice and informative.  Both of them felt the injury on my left foot during marathon might have caused me to readjust my gait and contribute to the uneven balance in the muscles on my left leg. X-rays showed my left knee cap to be slightly misaligned and pulling towards the outer-edge of my leg. I’ve got Runner’s Knee. I’ve been prescribed Physical Therapy two times a week, for a month. I start next Wednesday and will try to document the exercises I do at PT on this site.

Here are some pics I took of my x-rays:

Notice how the left knee cap doesn’t quite line up as well as the right?