I'm done grass running. It is now injuring me.

Huh, interesting mix. Seems like something you could play 18 on during the day and get stoned off your bejesus in the evening.

Grass running didn't hurt you. Were long range hunters 6000 plus years ago wishing they were able to run on asphalt or cement?

Running studies are all flawed. Going back thousands of years there have been billions of grass runners. Physiologists do studies with a few dozen individuals and I am supposed to believe such a study has value?

Are you familiar with sampling size done on pharmaceuticals? Are you familiar with sampling size done when calculating monthly c.p.i.? Hundreds of thousands for c.p.i. and millions for pharmaceuticals.

I often had little missteps here and there but nothing with acute pain associated. The knee pain came on pretty insidiously.

I have had pain in the same location. It would typically occur after running on grass when I would expect my foot to come down but the ground level was a little lower and hidden by the grass where the ground level was uneven and my foot would come down hard. It would also occur when doing all-out sprints around the curves on a track.

You might not notice it at first, but after the injury occurs, repetitive footstrikes makes it worse. I tend to stop at the first sign of pain and walk it out, change shoes (I carry three pairs of shoes to every workout). If the rest time while changing shoes and the shoe change doesn't eliminate the problem. I stop the workout. I stop a LOT of workouts... maybe one in four... but I'm still racing at a very high level.

How do you go about training on grass? Do you run on a college campus? A golf course? I'm really curious how one could do the majority of mileage on grass.

Hey, a couple questions...

1) Are you strength training?

2) What shoes are you wearing?

3) Do you have a shoe rotation?

4) What's your average cadence on easy runs?

I'm a true believer of grass running and the benefits it provides. It really strengthens the tiny foot muscles, however it does raise the caution for rolling your ankle like previous posts said.. I like running on all surfaces but I mostly run on the roads, doing mobility work every week really helps with these small injuries that could lead to bigger ones.. Happy running and hope you stay injury free!!!

I run on a large soccer field complex. Was only running about 30 miles per week, all on the fields, with mostly steady runs and on rare occasions some strides afterwards.

Only do push-ups, NB Becon with rotation of 2 pr., cadence low 170s, haven't rolled my ankle in years, which only happened on this one field that had surprise holes. I used to do drills and strength stuff in the gym years ago but got away from it. Many thanks for your input and well wishes.

Run on well-known grass surfaces, not unknown ones. The unknown ones are dangerous because they might be hiding a dip in the ground where occasionally you'll hyperextend or twist your knee, which is what I did last year. I get pain in the bone below the knee cap on the inside. It takes a fair # of rehab exercises to allow me to stabilize the knee enough to run pain-free on pavement and get back on some grass surfaces. Unstable surfaces make the pain return. The exercises I found online have you support the underside of your knee with a pillow while you extend your foot and hold it above the floor for 3-5 seconds x 20 or push your leg down on the pillow underneath the knee and hold 3-5 seconds x 20. Try them and see if they help.

That's the location my pain has been as well. I'll give those exercises a try. If you have a link to the site that would be great. Thanks!

My favorite surface to run on when injured is artificial turf, it's soft enough and completely even so you're not making and weird movements

Training on a variety of surfaces at a variety of paces is almost always your best bet. The repetitive stress of doing only one thing too often is a recipe for problems. Grass definitely has its place. Anecdotally, I did a hard 14 miler on pavement on Sunday, and on Monday I did my first run of the day on pavement. I did my second run of the day on grass. The pavement beat the crap out of me in the morning, but I was flying on the grass with little difficulty in the afternoon. I’ve noticed that combining the two allows me to run higher mileage with fewer injuries. Dirt is a great middle ground. Mix it up.

Ouch, tough to get in that 10 miler.

I do most of my sprint training on a grass athletics track, so surface pretty reasonable and consistent.

Every now and then I will travel the extra distance to train on a synthetic track where my rep times will be much faster.

I think this has been a productive discussion with many great insights coming from a lot of different runners with their own perspectives from both experience and science. I also wasn''t expecting testimonials from people who went through similar benefits and setbacks from grass running as I experienced. The feedback has been of high quality. Thanks to you all for weighing in.

I've run on artificial turf a bit with mixed experiences, mainly because some of these surfaces are overly squishy and others are really hard. That being said, some feel "just right".

We have a soccer complex that has 12 artificial turf fields so you can cover a pretty decent distance per lap. The plyability is variable from one field to another which I didn't like but maybe it's not a bad thing from an injury prevention perspective.

I have now sprained my ankle three times pretty badly while running on grass. The only time I will run on it is when it is familiar terrain. The danger is when after a winter it dries out and get a bit corrugated and then the lawn mowers pile loose grass on top of these divots.

I run the same loop for all my easy morning runs which end right next to a nice soccer field. ive been adding an extra mile running laps barefoot followed by barefoot strides. I wouldnt do that at just any field tho, only a well manicured one with nice, thick grass