Girl i'm seeing said i run too much

Don't listen to her. Sure you may have knee problems down the line, are you really gonna let that stop you from training now. Plenty of old dudes still run tons of miles so their knees can't be that bad.

Or you could be like me and spend several grand on a knee that I can't do sh!t with. I'm 48.

She's ignorant.

Running is great for your joints if you're smart about it and you don't just pound away like some of these fat people I see from time to time. Obviously what they're doing is bad for their knees, look at them. If you have a smooth fluid motion it's good for you. good for your heart, bones, joints, mental health, everything. She's just jealous. Runners are so freaking healthy.

Started running when 25. 47 now and still do. My knees have worn out some - have a little arthritis in one - but that's probably because unlike you, my mechanics have never been great. BUT: with stretching/strength training, I can still run 50-70 mpw mostly pain-free.

Executive summary: ignore her, go for it!

If you look at the statistics, sedentary people and overweight people end up with many times more knee problems than runners.

Run on soft surfaces. Run with good form. Don't ramp your training up too much at once at any point. You'll be fine. My dad was an insurance agent, so every time I got in a car my life was in mortal peril. Your girlfriend is a PT, so every time you put even the least bit of stress on your body, you're putting it at risk of breakdown. Don't listen to alarmists, always consider the source.

The Truth Seeker wrote:

If you look at the statistics, sedentary people and overweight people end up with many times more knee problems than runners.

this is true

I wouldn't want to be with someone who was nagging me about my mileage, especially when I plan on increasing it. People have run upwards of 150 miles a week for years, with no problems. Let your girlfriend know that you are reasonably sure what you are doing is beneficial for your body and that you don't plan on stopping. If she's still bothered by it, dump her, there is nothing worse than a so who holds one of the most meaningful things in your life against you.

This is my fiance's main retort to that tired excuse to not run. This summer her Clinical Instructor was always giving her shit about how she was gonna wear out her knees and blah blah, and she always cited the much higher percentage of overweight individuals with knee problems.

Also I'm sure most PT professionals would tell you that they see more knee injuries from sports like skiing than from running.

This ought to do the trick:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297575/

And tell her she should be ashamed to be in field of study that should not fall victim to the old "everybody knows" argument but that she aught to base her opinions on the available data which she hasn't even looked at.

If you really love running, someone who is against running will be hard to live with. Very hard, IMHO. I've reduced time spent with friends who were against running and frequently wanted to tell me the bad effects b/c it started to ruin my runs mentally--worrying about my joints instead of just enjoying the runs. Maybe the runs will ruin my joints but I have chosen to do it anyway. So, for better or worse, I want to enjoy running while I'm doing it, not constantly worry.

I would also say however try to run on soft surfaces, which is what I'm trying to do but it is hard as a woman b/c most soft surface areas are also isolated, which feels more dangerous than it used to after a couple of murders over the last several years--one locally and one in a place I was visiting/running. But anyway you are male so that is less of an issue. Find a state or national park or dirt road if you can.

The Truth Seeker wrote:

If you look at the statistics, sedentary people and overweight people end up with many times more knee problems than runners.

Do you or anyone have a link to any study/studies that show this? I'd love to be able to site a study when having this discussion with people. So many people use the excuse that running is bad for their knees to justify sitting around doing nothing.

Date somebody who understands what running means to you. Odds are there's more about you she doesn't care to understand.

5/10. It is a little obvious, but you got a number of serious responses.

Well, these articles don't directly compare to runners, but they discuss obesity and arthritis:

http://arthritis.webmd.com/news/20101007/arthritis-on-the-increase-obesity-partly-to-blame

http://www.hopkins-arthritis.org/patient-corner/disease-management/osteoandweight.html

By comparison, runners and knee arthritis:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/phys-ed-can-running-actually-help-your-knees/

thanks for the support. She honestly was a runner her first two years of college, and she said the coach had them doing pretty high mileage. She had to stop at the time because she had some issues with being too thin and i think her parents thought it was bad for her to be running so much. And i will say that if she was too thin and running too much, her reasons to stop running seriously were probably wellfounded in her case.

Anyway when she got so argumentative about it, it kind of seemed like there was some personal tension involved. Because with nonrunners, i have gotten a few similar responses before, but they just joke about it.

In any case, just from the way i feel when i run, i think i will be able to run all my life.

I did forget to ask her if she thought that all the new runners running marathons with programs of running 35 miles per week with 16, 18, and then 22 mile long runs were better off. These are the people that feel the pain in their knees when they jump up to these big distances without really conditioning the body for it.

For me, I have a faster goal time for the marathon, but as it will be my first, I am going to realistic with my paces when race day actually comes. I will push myself aerobically but i wont be pushing my legs to the point of fatigue that causes injury.

I'm pretty sure on BBC I came across an article about how running adds longevity to your life and contrary to what researchers expected one study that followed runners who started running middle aged through to their 70s showed that those who ran actually had LESS knee issues than those who did NOT run.

slowing the aging process

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7554293.stm

"The work tracked 500 older runners for more than 20 years, comparing them to a similar group of non-runners. All were in their 50s at the start of the study.

Nineteen years into the study, 34% of the non-runners had died compared to only 15% of the runners.

Both groups became more disabled with age, but for the runners the onset of disability started later - an average of 16 years later."

oh and further down in the article

"And there was no evidence that runners were more likely to suffer osteoarthritis or need total knee replacements than non-runners - something scientists have feared."