Go to runnersworld.com, click on injury prevention and follow the links. They list four sets of symptoms that indicate four common knee problems and suggest prevention/treatment for them.

I've been dealing with knee pain since April. It's located on the medial side of my right knee, about one inch below the kneecap. I can run on a treadmill (10 min/mi), but road running kills me, especially downhill. Unfortunately, runnersworld didn't help me-none of the symptoms matched up. One of these days I'm going to have to bite the bullet and see an orthopedist. Suggestions are welcome.

When training for my first marathon, I developed knee pain. I had a friend that was a physical therapist that watched me run. He determined I was running in the wrong type of running shoe and was developing runners knee. With the increase in mileage (no more than 10% from week to week) and the wrong shoe, the week point in body showed up.

So, make sure you go to a good specialty running shoe store, get assessed to the type of shoe you should be running in (do you overpronate, neutral, or under pronate for motion control, stabilizer, and cushioning-type shoes, respectively) and get the right shoes. Change your shoes with no longer than 500 miles.

Next, make sure to go to a gym and do leg strenthing exercises (like Nautilus - squats, quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves). They'll help stabilize your knee and keep your knee cap tracking properly. I'd do 2 sets of 12 reps each twice a week. Start out with light weights and work up the weight gradually and eventually work up to three sets (about 6 months).

Good luck and keep icing after your runs.

Keep running!

I would suspect by the way you describe your pain if on the outside to be illio-tibial ban irritation. If the Pain is inside then likely to be tendonitis. Around the Kneecap can be of many sources. Your history of hockey raises the everpresent concern of internal knee derangement, most common for this is meniscal cartilage injury. In your case the running may be pounding onto previously torn knee cartilage.
Having someone check it is a sound idea.

The illia-tibial band is very commonly irritated when increasing milage and because it is outside the knee space and just under the skin is quite treatable by icing. Streching is essential for these problems so I would first suggest this. The outside of the leg is maybe the only area that responds to stretching before, during and after running.

Once on a West coast bike trek I developed this about 10 days in. I felt great in the morning, began to feel it a little after a few hours and if I stopped could barely bend(the pain) to get going again. What helped then was icing after and frequent stretching. Also a neoprene sleeve helped by keeping the area from cooling down and tightening up whenever we stopped.

Dr Dave