Running fast is bad for you

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31095384

Ok fair enough, I can understand that training too hard can put strain on you and all that. But they think the optimum speed to run at is 5mph. That’s 12 minute miles! FFS that’s ridiculous!

You’ll be ok molgrips 😉

Try being the sweeper at a Parkrun I regularly sweep up 42min 5km “runners “They are in no danger of 12min pace

Is that not actually walking?

I think that is based on not being a ‘Runner’. Trying to run fast when unfit and in poor condition IS bad for you unless you are 6-16 years of age…although looking at some teenagers these days running fast might actually be the end of ’em!

You’ll be ok molgrips

Lol no, I need to slow down – even this lumbering oaf can easily beat 12m/mile!

There has to be some other factor at work in this study. No way is running at say, 9m pace going to shorten your life. Must be something else.

Yes .then they often drop out after 2 laps and I get to run nearly a lap to sweep up the next slowest

Jogging that slow is horrendous on the joints. A good canter at 5-6m/m pace opens up the gait to a natural style and involves much less harsh vertical motion, I.e it’s better for you (once you’ve got fit enough to cope of course!)

5/6 min a mile or km? most good runners in my club dont hold 6 min mile pace

Theres plenty of ways in which more exercise or more intensive exercise can be bad for you – but it depends on what your timeframe is. Mortality rates will be better for people who exercise moderately throughout their life than for people who are inactive. Intensive exercise can result in wear, tear and injury which in time can curtail your ability to exercise at all. So the net result of that exercise, if you look at the whole of life, is mortality rates that are no better, or worse than not exercising at all. Bad knees – bad news in later life.

With the study linked to though and a 12 year time frame – unless the sample set were all very old or very ill then hardly any of the people in the study should have died. The numbers in either part of the trial (moderate or intensive exercisers) who died must surely have been insignificant. The article doesn’t say how they died either – its obviously a study thats been cherry picked for a BHF press release – were encouraged to assume that people would have died of heart disease and similar chronic conditions. Maybe faster runners are more likely to be hit by a bus.

Yes it would be good to see what the causes of death were.

Yes it would be good to see what the causes of death were.

Running into things. The slow coaches have plenty time to react.

Mile. I’m not saying thats marathon pace, but I was in a training group that would do 800m reps in 2:15 and evening club races won around 14:45-15:00. Most folk can do 300-400m reps at 6 min mile pace. This is what I consider running, opening up the stride to an efficient smooth style.

Bloody hell must be a fast club our 5km record is 15.52 our parkrun record is 15.03 by a world class duathlete !

oh good – my knees are so knackered i walk fast rather than run nowadays.

This is what I consider running, opening up the stride to an efficient smooth style.

I completely understand that.. it feels far better to properly run than to plod along.. problem is I can only keep it up for half a mile 🙂 When I had somewhere dead flat and smooth to do 800m reps I managed about 2m50 as a PB I think.

Yes it would be good to see what the causes of death were.
Running into things. The slow coaches have plenty time to react.

Brilliant 😆

Edrik, it was a competitive athletics club. Almost all the clubs around Scotland and UK have runners that can do around 15 min 5ks. This is the club records for the one I was in http://inverclydeac.weebly.com/senior-records.html

Not us over 400 members and the biggest club in Wiltshire !!

That is a fine and impressive set of records there !!

http://www.avonvalleyrunners.org.uk/index.php?page=club-records

http://www.avonvalleyrunners.org.uk/uploads/AVR%20Track%20Records%20Aug%202014.pdf

We dont do much track as a club though

If that bbc story has correctly reported the findings of the study then how come professional athletes aren’t dying in their hundreds, and club runners? I suspect there’s some misreporting/misinterpretation going on in there somewhere…

Looks like bollocks to me. I accept that massive amounts of exercise might be bad but 4h per week doesn’t seem much. Maybe many of these runners were actually doing 12h or something, and they are the ones that suffer? Or else they took up running because of a health scare?

Oh, I just looked and it is bollocks. The uncertainties on the estimate are bigger than the estimate itself (for the relative risk at high levels of exercise).

http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleID=2108914

Which would support what macruiskeen said.. if very few had actually died.

Always worth visiting nhs behind the headlines when this sort of story makes the press…
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/02February/Pages/Strenuous-jogging-as-bad-as-doing-no-exercise-claim.aspx

“For example, there were only 36 people who were classed as “strenuous” joggers, and only two of these people died. These small numbers mean that we cannot say with certainty that there is definitely no difference between people in the most active jogging categories and the people who are sedentary.”

Even the editorial in the journal it was published in thinks it was bollocks.
http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleID=2108913

I assume Ron Hill didn’t take part in this ‘study’.

13:58 5k. Wow.

innit.

I just scraped under 20mins (19.57) once on a v flat milton keynes 5k, I can’t tell you happy I was about that, then there are runners who can set of 5 mins after me, and still beat me to the line!!!! 😯

The hardest races i ever did were 5000m track events mid lancs league,without any hills there was no change of pace and it was crushing being lapped by the winner and i ran them in 16.30 so not too shabby.

I just scraped under 20mins (19.57)

So much better than 20.01. it’s all in the mind.

I’ve done so many 20 somethings…always set off too fast, and organisers of races invariably have “hill of doom” at the end just to make them ‘fun’

16 and a half is legging it!

“Too much jogging ‘as bad as no exercise at all'”

To quote Stephen Fry:

But of course too much is bad for you.
“Too much” of anything is bad for you, you blithering tw47.
That’s what “too much” means, too much water would be bad for you.
Obviously, “too much” is precisely that quantity which is excessive, that’s what it means.
Jesus.

from: Fry and Laurie sketch

Edric 64 – Member
Try being the sweeper at a Parkrun I regularly sweep up 42min 5km “runners “They are in no danger of 12min pace

Well with that kind of “support” I suppose there’s no danger of them wanting to try and run faster, not surprised they drop out. Though looking at the BBC headlines maybe you’re doing them a favour then by not getting them to run quicker?

I thought the idea of Parkrun was to encourage people who were a bit wary of running clubs, but can see now it’s a way of weeding out joggers rather than runners.