Does running wear out the bodies of professionals and amateurs alike?
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
If one wishes to observe “begging the question” in the true definition of the phrase, there ya go. Many high-level runners struggle with constant injury. And those are the ones you’ve heard of. The ones you haven’t heard of? They couldn’t stay healthy at the level of training required. At high levels, athletes are pushing themselves right up to the brink of injury, and hopefully not past that point. It’s an otherwise okay article, but that sentence is a swing and a miss.
Novice athletes operate at 50% of their capacity and have high safety margins. Elite athletes redline at 99%. They need constant medical and PT leverage not because they are "sick," but to manage the structural debt accrued from that volume. The better the athlete, the tighter the feedback loop with their support staff needs to be to prevent system collapse.
Most athletes have (and need!) regular access to shared or personal sports therapists.
One day, a coworker joined me. He was a serious runner, and was recuperating from a knee injury, hoping to compete again in a month or two. His pace, learned on tracks and city sidewalks, was so much faster than mine that I noticed him jogging in place when I hit a slow patch. After we finished, he went back and ran it again at his preferred pace.
Next Monday he reported that he had exacerbated his injuries on the trail, and would probably never be able to run again.
Talk about pushing yourself to the brink... I mean, if that course had been flat, he would have been fine. But his "high-level" techniques were honed on a course without the threats and extra challenges for his support muscles, and that combination ruined him.
“A high-level athlete doesn’t need to see a sports doctor.
[…]
Professional athletes benefit from much better […] medical support than novice or amateur runners”
So, which is it? You might say their “specific programme that includes dietary measures, recovery phases and processes” is medical support but doesn’t involve doctors, but if you do, I think that’s playing with words.
High-level athletes know their bodies better than 99% of people, including non-sports doctors. They don't NEED to see a doctor, but when they're out of their depth, talking to an experienced doctor, combined with the skills of the athlete already, the athlete probably gets more out of the doctor than a "normie" would.
I've long suspected there is a range of exertion that is net negative with regard to injury risk. No exercise at all means no exercise related risk. However, I strongly disagree that an extreme amount of exercise is the riskiest. I think the most dangerous level of exertion sits right in the middle somewhere. That special zone where you are grinding down your bones a bit but your hormones and other compensation mechanisms don't react accordingly because you aren't going quite hard enough.
So there’s a huge selection bias in the population of people that can tolerate the training loads you’re talking about without having their bodies fail them and take them out of the population you’re thinking of.
A somewhat recent paper:
Systematic review and meta-analysis of antioxidants with or without exercise training improving muscle condition in older adults
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12491480/
Seems to imply that as we get older, antioxidants might help the body recover from exercise. More specifically, antioxidants may help resolve exercise induced inflammation in adults aged over 55 years.
So it seems that, yes, as you get older, its easier for the body to wear down, but this can be mitigated somewhat.
Keeping 80% or more of the volume at an easy effort is part of that. I think diet helps, because depending on what you eat, you are could be contributing to more or less inflammation in the body, which both could make injury more likely and recovery slower. I eat whole-food, plant-based.
I expect a good stretching routine would also aid injury prevention, but I've been pretty lousy about that most of the time.
Average heart rate is around 140.
To maintain my fitness, I do a mix of gym strength training, bike riding, and running, which also helps reduce some stress from any one type of training.
My secret? Genetics. I used to tell people that would ask about what I know about their injuries: “I don’t really know, I don’t get injured.” That isn’t true anymore, I’ve been nursing plantar fasciitis for about six months now. But I will say this about injuries: if it doesn’t get better in a couple of days, take a little time off, and see a doctor if it persists more than a couple of weeks. And my other “secret” is to be reasonable about your mileage. OP has the right idea with a few runs a week at a reasonable distance. I don’t do that, that’s probably why my foot hurts right now. You can miss a day, none of us are going to the Olympics.
Otherwise, after 40, don’t just run. Do yoga, lift weights, ride a bicycle once in a while. Sacrifice a run if you have to so you can lift twice a week, you’re not getting any stronger. Take ten minutes with a YouTube video to do some yoga, you’re definitely not getting any more flexible. You should do these things when you’re young, but they are almost a requirement after age 50.
* about 4 miles
* I don't run for time, just a trot
* not training for anything
* drink a full glass of water beforehand. If sweaty outside, two glasses
* had some pain in my hips and knees. Switched to a ball-strike rather than a heel-strike. Pain went away. (you can feel the difference in the impact on the knees and hips)
* don't run downhill
* the big toe joint hurts and has gotten large making it hard to find shoes that fit
* don't run when not feeling well, or there's ice
* I feel weird when I can't run for some reason
* It feels good to run, and I like the results
A funny thing happened after about a year. I realized I was looking forward to the run, and missed it when I wasn't.
But it took a whole year :-/
I stopped doing that sort of weekly long run after that and did a lot more in the 6-10 miles range.
Then during and immediately post-COVID shutdowns, I just started running every time I felt stressed about something, and I started to neglect all the other holistic movements that complement running.
This ended up leading to a weird twinge in my hip that 2 years of focused strength training hasn't eliminated. Doctor says there is nothing structural but I don't run any more and I miss it often. There is a flow state I seem to get in somewhere just under to just over an hour in to a run.
The only other time I ever get in to that wonderful flow state is every once in a while when playing guitar, but it's rare.
I does feel good to run, and I miss it.
Could be arthritis.
I hate it if I can't run. I feel like a slug.
Eh, it's kinda there
Staying safer and getting the benefits comes down to progressive training (carefully managing volume and intensity), adapting lifestyle/recovery, and getting guidance/support (coaches, clubs, medical help) rather than assuming pros are built differently and amateurs are safe.
To recreational runners, the more interesting question is for light jogs 5K-10K, where the goal is to maintain or slowly improve your cardio fitness, not push everything to the max.
The article doesn't address that even in passing.
Now, if I had tried to run every one at "race pace", I would likely be trashed or injured by the end from insufficient recovery.
For example, the 1904 Olympic marathon, the organizer believed drinking water was a bad idea while exercising and the winner took a mix of brandy, strychnine and egg whites during the race.
The strychnine taker did feel like crap. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_O...
>Hicks led the race by 1.5 miles (2.4 km), but he had to be restrained from stopping and lying down by his trainers....He continued to battle onwards, hallucinating, and was barely able to walk for most of the course. When he reached the stadium, his support team carried him over the line, holding him in the air while he shuffled his feet as if still running.
So now you're on a Wheaties box and making millions in endorsements, that's what.
Even if it shortens their life, many athletes would take a drug that guarantees athletic success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman%27s_dilemma The results have been disputed, but the take-away for me is that athletes have a variety of motivations, and the perceived rewards might be very different than what you might find rewarding.
So now I row every day. I get a much better exercise high from rowing, progress is much more noticeable, it’s improved vitals more than running has, there’s no pain, and I don’t have to worry about weather. I occasionally miss the change of scenery or things like running on a cold snowy day but I can just go rent some cross country skis when I get that itch.
I went to a "run clinic" where they observed my gait. I'm paraphrasing here since this was many years ago, but basically they said that my stride was slightly too large and that my knees were behind my feet during the foot strike. My cadence was around 150-155 steps per minute and they suggested increasing it to 170-180, basically meaning my steps would be smaller but more frequent.
I downloaded a metronome app on my phone and set it to 172 to make sure that I maintained the proper rhythm while running. Worked immediately and I never had shin splints again.