TO RUN OR NOT TO RUN
The picture above is of me running in the Spirit Run at Fashion Island, Newport Beach on March 14th, 2004. I suppose this is conclusive proof that I like, or at least advise, running. Unfortunately that’s not completely true. Running, like many other things done for health and fitness, is somewhat controversial. To run, or not to run, that is the question.
I thought probably the best way for me to approach the subject of whether running is helpful or harmful to your health and fitness, is with a list of pros and cons, hopefully giving a balanced view of the subject.
Pro: As you may know, if you’ve read other parts of this web site, I advise three parts to staying fit and lean; strength training, cardio training, and diet. For millions of people in the United States and other countries, running is a great, simple way to keep fit and lean. I advise it as the cardio training part for clients who can (explained in the Con section), and I have often seen it be very successful.
Con: You don’t have to be a trainer for very long to meet “running victims.” Often these are people who have run for many years, loved running, but are now suffering the consequences. Often they are plagued with things like plantar fasciitis (an inflammation caused by excessive stretching of the plantar fascia, or the fibrous tissue on the bottom of your foot), injured knees, severe low back pain, heel pain, arch pain, heel spurs, and other fixable and unfixable results.
Pro: My personal story is that by running in prep for the Spirit Run (often two 5k’s per week on a treadmill), I lost about 25 pounds. Along with the running I did my usual two days a week of strength training, and I was also doing a strict “Eat To Live” diet during that time. So I’m sure that it was the combination of those things that made the weight loss happen, but the running was a necessary component.
Con: I started “training” for the Spirit Run around November 2003, starting with two minutes of running, three minutes of walking, etc., and quickly working up to doing at least two 5K’s per week continuing to increase both time and speed. About the middle of January I started to have pain in my knees. I cut down the amount of running, but the pain continued and worsened. After about two weeks I realized I’d have to stop. I felt bad because I’d already signed up for the race and other friends and clients were planning to run with me, but I didn’t want to continue because I knew that a knee injury could last for the rest of my life. After thinking I wouldn’t be able to run in the race and stopping running, I started to tentatively do some one mile runs at the end of February, and ended up running the race with no serious pain.
Pro: While researching running without injury, I found a lot of web pages of people who love running, claim it has done wonders for them, and either never mention any injury, or tell how to keep from having an injury. A good example is the web site listed here: http://www.leigh.org/running/ I couldn’t find this modest fellow’s name on his site, but I guess it’s Leigh. At any rate he says he’s been running since he was 38, and he is now 68. That’s 30 years of running and he’s been running injury free.
Con: On the other hand if you write “running injury” into a Google search you get over 1.25 million hits, which tells me that somebody must be getting injured. Consider the basic statistics of running. Each time your foot hits the ground it absorbs about 2.5 times your body weight (anywhere from 230 to 450 pounds!) and you land on each foot around 800 times per mile. You obviously don’t have these sorts of problems with walking, so it must be the “impact,” or the time that you’re off the ground and slam back down that is the dangerous part of running.
Pro: Probably the most comforting information I found about running and injury was on this web site: http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0223.htm . It states, “The most comprehensive study concerning running and disability was begun in 1984 at the Stanford Arthritis Center in the US. Initially, 863 people (632 males and 231 females) ranging in age from 50 to 72 took part in the research. 498 individuals were long-distance runners, while 365 subjects did not run at all.” After a lot of tweaking of the study to try to make sure it wasn’t “slanted,” the final conclusion (after an eight year study) was that, “At present, it seems relatively certain that running and other forms of exercise are linked with positive health outcomes, including the well-being of the muscles, connective tissues, and joints.”
Con: I suppose the one big con in all of this is that if you’re going to run you have to do it right. The problem is that we all know how to run. We did it a lot when we were kids. But it turns out that now that we’re adults it doesn’t come quite so naturally. First off many, if not most, have gained some or a lot of body weight (making each impact a lot bigger). Secondly, most of us will have decreased our flexibility, sometimes considerably. Thirdly, most of us will have developed “muscle imbalances” (muscles uneven in strength from habitual activities). All of these things can lead to injuries, but probably the thing that leads to most injuries as an adult is our lack of patience. When we were children, if you recall, we learned to crawl, walk, and then run very gradually. We worked up to it, we trained for it, for a few years. It’s not uncommon for otherwise reasonable adults to decide they’re going to run in something like the Spirit Run in a few weeks and then start blasting away at it to get the best time possible, making themselves poster children for running injury. Looking back, although I gave myself over four months to get ready for the Spirit Run, I’m sure I was dropping my time and increasing my distance too rapidly.
So, what’s my final call on running? I say do it if you “can,” and if you want to. There are lots of ways to get your weekly requirement of cardiovascular work in. Running is just one of them. The great thing about running is that once you decide to do it and once you start doing it, the intensity is very high. You can burn a lot of calories in a relatively short amount of time. Of course, one of the reasons it’s such high intensity is that in order to do it you have to bound into the air, lots of times. The bad thing about bounding into the air is that you have to come down again, and that’s sure to cause some impact. There is research and lots of anecdotal evidence to show that such bounding won’t injure the body if it’s done correctly. If you love running, as millions of people do, I say do it with pleasure, as long as you educate yourself about it and do it right. If the thought of running just makes you gag, I say look for some other way to keep your cardiovascular system fit and yourself lean. Just remember, channel changing with the remote, even if you do it at rapid intervals, doesn’t qualify.