Dr. Davis recommends that runners without access to gait analysis and biofeedback do a little of what she does in the clinic at the University of Delaware.

"For people with or at risk for stress microfractures, we ask them to listen to their footstrikes and simply make the sound softer," says Dr. Davis. "For people with pain under the kneecap, we tell them to run in place in front of a mirror and concentrate on keeping their knees apart."

In the meantime, back at the laboratory, she is continuing to recruit patients into the study. Funded by both the Department of Defense and the National Institutes for Health in the interest of helping individuals to remain physical fit throughout their lives, the studies eventually will include 60 runners. Data reported at the Experimental Biology 2007 meeting were for five patients in each group.