I’ll chime in on knee talk, though I probably don’t have anything useful to add… I have a small meniscus tear that 90% of the time keeps itself in line, but occasionally pops out to say hi. Everything else in my knee looks “great” so surgery was ruled unnecessary and when it does fall out of place, an ACE bandage, tape, compression sleeve, or ignoring it works fine until it goes back into hiding. That said, I started having pretty significant bilateral knee pain for no apparent reason some months ago - in the patellar tendons. Especially bad with stairs and switching between run-walk intervals. In a bizarre twist, my primary doc mentioned it in convo with the now-retired sports med doc under whom she did her residency and who I had seen in the past for an ankle thing - he remembered me and said he’d take a stab at the situation… long story short, he suggested I ditch my Altras for a 8-10mm drop shoe and see if that changed anything - and IT DID! Knee pain GONE. Instantly. And it’s stayed gone for 3 weeks and counting while wearing shoes with some drop. I haven’t tried going back to the Altras, or putting heel lifts in them to retrofit, but I will down the road. For whatever reason, and he lost me in the “it’s all connected!” Explanation, I need some heel lift to reduce strain on my pateller tendons during push off and braking.
Anyway, sometimes all it takes is a change of shoe!