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I tried running only in zone 3, but there's just too much traffic in London these days.
Just putting this here now – there is no link between running and osteoarthritis, and in fact it tends to strengthen the joint. People with arthritis in their knees are either ex-football players or skiers.
Lots of myths about running leading to injuries. I started running at 17 (late starter) and am now 60 and other than Arthritis in my large toe joint (which can be surprisingly debilitating at times) I have no issues other than some aches and pains when I am training "hard". All disappear after a few days of not running. As above the opposite appears to be true and running can help avoid issues that are often due to sedentary lifestyles. Of course there will be some that have issues that are exacerbated by running but I think these are few and far between. I now race against people I ran against in the 70's and 80's and there are still a lot of them about and many running very well.
I have always been competitive with myself and so I guess that is my main driver. If I’m doing it (running, riding, lifting, DIY etc) I want to get better.
There are many versions of better. For me it means the ability to go further. I'd rather be able to 4 or 5 hours at a slow pace than a 20 minute 5km. I had a social club run from Kingussie to Dalwhinnie a couple of weeks back (25km or so) that was pretty much my ideal.
I occasionally rode with a local group which seemed to be around 50% injured fell runners. I think to an extent it goes with the territory, particularly relative to cycling, because it's a weight-bearing exercise with relatively high impact forces plus a tendency to seek out and punish any bio-mechanical weaknesses. Obviously individuals vary, but I think that's a reasonable general take. The heavier you are, the higher impacts tend to be as well.
I used to run a fair bit, mostly I guess as mountaineering 'training', and actually found that running more, to an extent, made me more resilient. As people have said, you can help yourself with... specific strength and mobility work, careful shoe choice, good running technique/form/whatever you want to call it etc. The other thing is to listen to your body and try not to increase load too fast.
A classic cyclist thing is to have good cardio-vascular fitness, but muscles that really aren't well adapted to weight-bearing work, so you end up going faster/harder/longer than your legs are capable of coping with, then regretting it afterwards. I suspect a lot of us have been there.
It may be that you're simply pushing too hard, too soon even if you think you're not. I'd maybe back off a bit and stop worrying about times. My take is that competitive running is pretty horrible, but running to simply enjoy the motion and being outdoors is ace and less likely to damage you and simply running consistently will progress your running more effectively than getting caught up in a boom/bust injury doom loop.
I'd agree with scotroutes. I've been running for a few years now. It's definitely getting easier. I use that to run more rather than faster (I'm definitely not fast). In the winter I try and run most days as I'm doing less of other stuff. I also do some longet runs or go for a run somewhere nice. Working away or on holiday I'll always try a get a run in. It's a great way to sight see. Did some beautiful runs along the beach on the west coast of Ireland last week
Over 50, run more days than not, and no injuries so happy with this strategy
I listened to @scotroutes and started following Run better with Ash on youtube, i am just starting my running journey and doing Couch to 5k and started week 5, althogh in my usual stubborn way, i have managed two 5k straight through as i got ahead of myself and wanted to see if i could do it.
I'm 97kg and an old prop forward, so spent years trying to avoid running after i left army after a dislocated knee that caused me nothing but problems, but have started as i have entered the London Landmarks half marathon in April to raise money for diabetes charities.
The youtube channel above has been great, do their 5-10min warm up, do my run, then back to anything between 10-30 mins warm down, a lot of what he does it a mixture of stretching and some strength and is a lot more dynamic than just yoga or stretching, been very conscious of not injuring myself.
I think like you @letmetotalktomark, i am in East Anglia, but also a singlespeeder, so convince myself this must have helped knees and tendons as i've done my best to punish them for years!
Wahoo SYSTM is very good for bodyweight strength and yoga work outs too
One of them is a qualified sport physio. I could try the I read this on Google approach but I suspect she’d skelp ma lugs.
Maybe we should get the physio and (different person) sports physio I know that both told me (not Google), and you're physio to fight it out. A Fife Physio vs CGR physio battle ?
*it might be worn out knees, what I've been told is it's not always that, and that people have a tendency to default to the assumption
I had similar issues to OP over 10/15 years. I always got small injuries, niggles that would then escalate into stuff that needed a physio to fix. I'd run for a few weeks, get a niggle, then be off it for months, then restart the cycle. Really frustrating. I tried changing shoes, custom orthotics, coaching technique, etc. with minimal results.
The thing that changed it for me -- massively changed it -- was simply to consistently run *a lot* slower. My reasoning was that I don't get injured when walking, so I shouldn't get injured when running slowly. I set myself the goal that every run would be a Z2 run. At the start, this felt abominably slow, embarrassingly slow. But now my Z2 pace is the same as my previous Z3/4 pace. I am running longer distances than before. I enjoy it. I have zero injuries or niggles. I feel great the day after a run, not sore or tight at all. I can see that my endurance and aerobic base has massively improved, which has helped performance on the bike. I can even play around a bit with running pace to turn on the gas from time to time (with caution). It's been a game-changer for me -- not sure why I never tried to implement it before.
Anyway, I now think the first priority of any recreational runner should be to run to be injury free, not to chase some mythical pace/time/distance. Injuries are not fun at all, they slow down your progression overall and wipe out fitness gains. Try to run to be injury free first; then, see what pace/distance you end up reaching. Do this rather than busting a gut and ****ing up your knees/back/hips/ankle in the process just so you can bag some impressive time.