I'm a 35yr old male, currently 257lbs at 6'5". Down from 290lb 3 months ago...started training for a 5k 5 weeks ago..building my distance base and up to 2 or 2.5 miles per training run. Everything great, no pain as long as I run every other day. I hyper-extended my left knee just slightly after a training run of 2 miles followed by 45 minutes of elliptical cardio work. It has been 9 days and I still don't feel like the knee is ready to run on..it's still uncomfortable and sometimes painful on the inner ligament area. I've used a neoprene type of support to continue easy elliptical cardio training, but I'm not sure when I should start to run on it again. Just a few jogging steps and it shoots pain into my knee...what do you think is the healing time necessary for this type of injury before I can expect to run again?
Reply - Janet
Shannon, without knowing more about how the hyperextension occurred it's hard to guess just how much damage you caused.  If it was a pretty severe hyperextension, you may have traumatized one of the ligaments in your knee - in which case this is going to take several weeks.  Did you see a doc to determine how bad the trauma was?  If it was a fairly mild hyperextension, then perhaps you could do some walking for a week or two to help you make the transition back to running.  Keep your paces easy and the terrain level for now - as hills or uneven terrain may make things more challenging for your ligaments.  If you still have significant swelling and pain with normal daily activities, you'd be wise to lay off the cardio just a bit - back the intensity down and cut the duration a little so that you're using it to get blood flowing but not stressing the tissue.  Best choice is to see a good orthopedist to find out exactly what tissue you injured - then you can plan your return to running based on that.  Hope this helps - best wishes for a speedy recovery!  Janet Hamilton, MA, RCEP, CSCS, RRCA coaching instructor