A Passion for Running

Comment by Tazz

Saturday January 07, 2006 @

MArk….just a quick question about the RBF most recent list…I have posted a thread the past few days and never see it in the list , is there something I am missing??

Tazz

Comment by alejandra

Monday January 09, 2006 @

omg i loved that article. it made me totally pat myself on the back for “being a runner”.

yeah we so rock.

Comment by Angela

Tuesday January 10, 2006 @

I loved reading that article this month. It really made sense. Sometimes I think people want an excuse not to be active. I see so many healthy and ‘young’ runners at every race. Running is a positive connection with my healthier future.

Comment by Joyce

Sunday January 15, 2006 @

thanks for the link! that was a great article, i agree sometimes people just look for excuses not to run

Comment by Jim

Wednesday July 05, 2006 @

Looks as if I’ve arrived at the party long after it was over. But maybe I can do something to revive it. I am what you might call the “poster child” for people like Amby Burfoot’s 85-year-old Aunt Marian. Coincidentally, my mother happens to be 85 now, and she warned me for years that my running would have disastrous consequences. Well, now she can say, “I told you so” — in a loving and concerned way, of course. After about 35,000 miles of running, including 12 marathons, over a period of 25 years, I had to give up running 3 years ago because of arthritis pain in the hips so severe that I could not sleep at night. Now I gamely try to get my exercise by walking — mostly on wooded trails to avoid hard surfaces — but it’s really a struggle, and every step is painful, even after taking a hefty dose of Ibuprofen. Amazingly, I did not gain any weight when I stopped running. In fact, I’ve lost almost 20 pounds since then without even realizing it — just didn’t bothered to weigh myself until my wife bought me a set of scales just recently. But I take that as a bad sign — it probably means I’ve lost a large amount of muscle from my legs. In the article, Burfoot quotes the Arthritis Foundation as saying, “The stronger the muscles and tissues around your joints, the better they will be able to support and protect those joints.” So I guess the converse would be true: less muscle, less protection. That turns out to be a nice Catch-22. To keep the muscles strong enough to withstand the arthritis, you have to exercise at a certain level, but the arthritis makes it too painful to exercise at that level. Burfoot mentions that “few docs are willing to make [the] leap [of explaining] why running and other vigorous exercise don’t lead to joint pain.” Well, I guess there are enough former runners like me — people now headed for a wheelchair or joint replacement surgery — to make those docs really nervous about making that leap.