Hello and welcome to the Runers Connect audio blog on the Run to the Top podcast. This is Coach Claire Bartholic and today I am reading

Runners Knee, How to Diagnose, Treat and Prevent, Written by John Davis.

Is there any injury more ubiquitous than runner's knee?

It's within the popular lexicon as one of the eternal enemies of the distance runner.

Aching or stabbing pain around the knee cap has kept runners young and old from enjoying the sport

they love.

The good news is that biomechanical research has uncovered ways that you can treat

runner's knee and even prevent it from occurring.

To learn more about biomechanics, please read Introduction to Running Biomechanics.

How common is runner's knee? In a word, vary. By a number of measures, runners knee referred to in medical circles as

patello femoral pain syndrome or PFP is the number one most prevalent running injury.

To large scale, scientific studies have confirmed this.

A 2003 study of over 800 runners training for a road race in Canada found that

runners knee alone accounted for almost one third of all the injuries

sustained by the sample group over the study's 13-week

duration. Another study published the year before, evaluated over 2,000 injured

runners that visited a sports medicine clinic.

Again, runners knee was by far the most common injury,

accounting for twice as many injuries as the next most common problem, IT band syndrome, and made up 17% of all injuries.

Symptoms of runners knee. Classically, Runner's knee is characterized by an aching or stabbing pain

that's inside or around the kneecap.

Running, especially down hills, is painful and descending stairs usually provokes pain too.

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