In trying to increase the miles in my running schedule and I ran into an old friend again...knee pain. I am lucky in the sense that I do not truly have knee issues such as torn cartilage or impact issues from worn out cartilage. So hopefully I still have a couple of thousand miles in my knees left to go.
What i have managed to find out over the years is that if I do have problems with my knees it is a matter of foot alignment.
The last two hundred miles, I was doing okay with my second of Brooks, “The Beast” running shoes. As I have stated before the shoes were designed for big, fat, heavy, hairy, smelly, inefficient runners such as myself.
Even thought the shoe is designed to be a motion control shoe the last of the shoe is not quite right for my foot. I tend to buy shoes one size larger than my normal size to accommodate swelling that can occur during training or during a race.
My feet are long but they are also narrow resulting with my foot swimming around in a larger shoe. I did okay at first with the current shoes but began to experience some itching underneath my left knee cap and some outright pain just below my right knee. After some feeling around I determined that my right knee was experiencing some ITB (iliotibal band syndrome) pain.
Yesterday I went to the local running store and brought some Sole inserts. In my last set of shoes I had the same make of inserts and they worked well. They were probably the best thing next to custom inserts from a podiatrist and about 260 dollars cheaper.
The inserts are customizable in that you can mold them to your feet. You merely place the inserts in the oven at 250 degrees for a couple of minutes, then put the heated inserts into your shoes quickly, then step into and lace up your shoes. After a couple of minutes the warm molds will conform to your feel.
I did two miles on them today. I was able to feel the difference immediately. No knee pain or sub-patella itch. The felt so good that I was able to increase my run time by two minutes on the first mile. The shoes although heavier felt more forgiving and the alignment made a world of difference. It was worth the money.
