I mentioned a few weeks ago that DD has a young man in her life who is an Exercise Sports Science major (He is also Type O). We were talking about running the other night and ESS told us something that may solve a mystery and facilitate a more complete healing of my knee.

He was talking about a professor of his who has run multiple marathons. He trained hard and ran long hours – always on the safe side of the road, facing traffic. Continuous running with his left leg slightly lower than his right, took its toll on his body. I’m not sure whether his bone growth was affected, or whether his joints were damaged, but ESS said that when he took off his corrective appliance, the class gasped at how crooked he looked. He urged them to run half of their time on one side of the street and half on the other.

This morning I went for a run. I was listening to J. Vernon McGee on my MP3 player and enjoying the cool temperature. About 20 minutes into the run I remembered what ESS had said and switched to the other side of the street. At first I didn’t notice any difference. Then I began to feel something. It wasn’t pain – more like a stretching sensation.

Now I am wondering…could running on the left side of the street have contributed to the patella femoral syndrome in my right knee? I worked hard on my quads all summer, so I rarely have pain anymore from everyday activities, but I still can’t do lunges.

I remember severely bruising my right knee in high school. After the injury healed, I would occasionally get a weak feeling in that knee, but it was not a problem until 2008. I never could pinpoint why I developed patella femoral. Now I’m wondering about running crooked.

I’m going to try running 1/3 on the right side of the road, 1/3 on the left, then 1/3 on the right. I’ll blog about the results of my experiment.