I've got the same exact problem. I fell down some stairs in college and hit the outside of my right knee on an arm rail. It was sore for a long time, went away, and now it has slowly come back. One thing I think you will notice is that it only starts hurting if your knee flexes alot. So now, when I run, I keep my legs stiffer than usual, and when I bike I put the seat up fairly high unless I'm just messing around. Also about two weeks ago I bought a neoprene knee brace from Wal-Mart that works wonders. It looks like a wrap, and has these bubbles in it that channels the sweat into them for evaporation. I put it on, crank down the velcro pretty tight, then fold over the top and bottom so I've got two layers of tight neoprene around the hurt part. I went from not being able to run half a mile and not being able to bike 5 miles on the road to being able to run until my lungs give in (2 miles) and mountain biking until I'm exhausted (12 miles off-road, with lots of hills and tree roots). As you can see I'm not in the best shape right now because I haven't been able to push myself in over a year, but that brace has enabled me to start doing that again, so I recommend you do the same before it gets worse. Yeah I ran every day last week, biked 12 miles off-road saturday night, and did the same thing as soon as I woke up sunday morning. It's been a looooong time since I could do that. If you get more information, please relay it here, or write to charrison@csiweb.com.


Thanks,
Cory