I recently started cultivating a daily exercise routine as a lifestyle rather than an every once in a while thing when I all of the sudden want to be healthy but the next day forget all about it. I started out slow with myself, because I knew it was the only way to fully integrate it into my lifestyle. I started by driving to a park every morning for a short walk. That turned into waking up and doing a bit of yoga and then leaving for my walk. By this point I've progressed to every other day doing a work out routine at home (weight lifting, yoga, etc.) and the days I don't do that I go on my walks. But a couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to get into running. So I decided that for a couple of minutes during my morning walk, I would run. So I did this for about a week straight and I felt fantastic. I felt energized and healthy and motivated and I couldn't believe I'd never tried it before.

Fast forward to after that week... I took a few days off of my walks to rest my legs a bit and when I went back for another go at the walking/running thing, the moment I started running my legs started hurting very badly around my knee area. Running wasn't impossible, but they hurt bad. They felt like a ligament or tendon sort of pain... I looked it up and it sounded a bit like runners knee, but I didn't think that the small amount of running I was doing could have caused it.

I decided to do more at home workouts, and only go for walks every once in a while until it healed up. It's now been a week and a half and it still hurts pretty bad when I walk for more than a minute. I researched the proper way to run (warm ups cool downs then stretching) and I'm way better prepared to do it now, but my legs won't seem to heal. Am I just being impatient or is this a serious issue? And am I just not the type of person who should be a runner, or did this happen just because I didn't do my research and didn't do everything properly..?