Day 17: Just Don’t Run

Running is a bad idea.

The chances of injury are high. The physical benefits are modest. No matter what your fitness goal, there is almost certainly a more effective and a safer way to achieve it.

Do you want to get stronger? Lose weight? Look great? Feel better and have more energy?

Don’t run! Find yourself a great bodyweight exercise routine and you’ll accomplish all of these goals with less chance of injury and in a much shorter time frame.

Now I’m not a personal trainer or an exercise physiologist, but I’m pretty certain that most professionals would agree with what I just said.

Having said all of that: I love to run, and that, in my opinion, is the only good reason to go for a run.

My Run Today

Today I was back at Currahee Mountain for the third time in as many weeks.

My pace slowed by a full 30 seconds per mile this week for reasons I’ll get into below.

My number one goal every time I run is injury prevention. The last time I ran Currahee my left knee started to whine a bit on the downhills, so this week I slowed my downhill pace quite a bit. I shortened my stride and slowed to about a 12 minute mile pace when going downhill to minimize any stress on my knees. The result was a 30 second reduction in my average pace, but a happier knee, and that’s an unqualified win in my book.

This week I only took one photo. At the summit I hiked around a bit to get a good view from the opposite side of the mountain. The side of the mountain facing east-to-northeast is an open rock face with tons of great photo opps. All my prior photos have been from that side of the mountain.

The other side is mostly forested, but I found a boulder-strewn area where I got a good west-to-northwest view and was able to just barely sneak the water tower into view.

Looking west from the summit of Curahee Mountain.
The white dot just above the trees on the right side of the picture is the water tower featured in a prior post.

Featured image by Jenny Hill on Unsplash

2 thoughts on “Day 17: Just Don’t Run”

  1. Nice shot. I love running but after 3 knee surgeries and that look from my wife I have stopped running. I miss is a lot. Just putting on my sneakers and going but knees are important and surgery is expensive and a hassle.

    Don’t run, unless you love it and it doesn’t hurt you. 😂

    Reply
    • Surgery would be the end of running for me as well.

      I’ve gone to PT for IT band issues on two separate occasions, and the patellar tendon in my left knee is about 30% detached from the top of the tibia from a basketball injury.

      I have given up basketball. I sprained an ankle severely one too many times. On top of the partial patellar tendon detachment, that was enough to call it quits. But I still keep running under certain limited conditions.

      I really do love it and I’ll keep doing it until / unless my body tells me it’s done bouncing back. That’s when I’ll have to get a bike. 🙂

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