Why did you quit running?

After running hard from age 15-30, I pretty much quit through my 30s - ran 15 mpw, no more. no racing. I just didn't want to run hard - I can't remember why. Maybe just lazy. Apathy. Embarrassing.

But then hit 39 and got excited for masters running and have run seriously for the last 5 years - great, great experience to rediscover running and finally train right. I was so clueless back in hs.

Constant injuries, tired of not being able to walk down stairs in the morning, sick of being beaten by 17 year olds, and the real reason, I just didnt want to

originally i thought track was a stupid sadistic thing to do.

however, once you win the gym class race, followed by winning the school meet, etc etc you realize you can get a scholarship. so it is work for pay, run and get an education.

once at university, you ask yourself, what am i doing? are we going to the olympics any time soon? how much does the #10 in the world make in 10k anyway?

through the process, i learned to love this stupid sadistic sport and it was tough to quit.

with no goals these days, it is a great pleasure to work out.

now once in a while i go out on the mountain bike ride - into the mountains for 6 hours for a great dose of pain and pleasure and can't help but remember the "good old days"

some of which were priceless.

run young man run!

I quit running when I was 23, about a year after I met my wife. I had a flare-up of runner's knee and pretty much quit. I went from 165 to 200 in a year. I started boxing and dropped down to 180 and started running again when I was 25. I'm no where near as fast as I used to be but I like to run, and I enjoy competing, even if 19:00 is about all I can manage for 5K these days.

Severe eating disorder which damaged my heart.

I was weight lifting and hurt my back, started experiencing a bit of numbing on my right side that is aggravated by running and things just haven't felt the same since. Never saw myself being in this position, truly love running.... Its been effecting me mentally and probably will for quite a while, hopefully I can bounce back.

After a series of annoying bacterial infections and sicknesses over a month's period of time I was eventually diagnosed with a nearly fatal case of double lung pneumonia. I truthfully feel that two medical related constraints have since hindered my athleticism.

1) Medical staffs had to pierce my left lung in order to drain the bacterial fluids during a 13-day hospitalization. In many cases I was lucky I didn't die from the double lung pneumonia or come out with a fatal disease. Hospital doctors narrowed it down to 1) Tuberculosis, 2) HIV or 3) Very bad pneumonia while I was in isolation. The left lung was worse than the right which recovered with the standard antibiotic medications. The entrance point on the left lung has scar tissue that I could still feel when going into oxygen debt even a full year later. It doesn't bother me that much now but I know it's there.

2) I took prednisone as recommended by doctors. This not only caused me to have very bad allergic reactions but it felt like it literally stripped my muscle mass, especially in the stomach area. I honestly feel the prednisone left me with a long term side effects. Coincidentally when I puffed up with red spots all over my body it was heavily concentrated in my stomach area. Internally, the prednisone caused many problems too.

Afterward, I was told by my regular doctor that I'd be starting over again as if I'd never run before. My good friend remembers going on a run with me in the very beginning of my recovery and noticing my calf sizes had depleted terribly compared to two months prior. I could hardly run a mile without stopping but I stuck with it and came back as best I could. But when you go from being a crisp D1 miler to someone that can't break 4:30 a year later when you are physically looking and feeling much stronger, there's a definite problem. That's why I lost interest. I've come back to running since for a 2-4 months at a time since but it's just not the same. Dissolved into a regular.

Injured out. :(

Started noticing my JR high school year that my calves had this deep, intense pain going on when standing. Could still run, but found running to be more difficult as the years went on. Eventually the calf pain turned into hamstring pain and my legs started to weaken. Deal with tingling and neuropathy and eventually running became so miserable that I stopped altogether. I have a few more things I can try that I suspect may relieve the weakness, but I think I'm a goner in terms of being competitive again.

I was forced to quit running in 2008.

I had a bizarre accident, a one off, where I injured my knee badly. After incompetent university physiotherapists tried "conservative treatment" that had no hope of ever working I had surgery a year later. My knee was never the same and to this day I'm in pain a lot of the time, when sleeping and in the day.

Since 2008 I tried to make many comebacks. In early 2009 I was running a few miles at a time, maybe 3 miles (the physios said it was OK to do this).

After surgery I had rehab and then again in 2010 I tried to return to running. Since then I've tried most years. Last year I managed to get to the point where I did once race, a 5K. During the 5K I felt fine. Afterwards I felt like I'd been shot in the knee and I was in severe pain for a long while.

Each time I try to come back it fails and I can't handle the pain. I haven't taken pain meds for this because I don't see how I'd ever come off them and I don't want to be on them for the rest of my life.

I was very young when all of this happened and it sucks because I feel in some ways disabled by it. For years on end I wasn't able to go out for a walk with my friends, go hiking, ride a bike (that still hurts my knee unfortunately otherwise I'd have tried to switch sports). All of the physical things I loved out in nature were gone. I'd built my life around sport and I loved doing things like 5 a side football (soccer) and I couldn't do any of that any more, or even a casual game of badminton with a friend.

I then contracted a more serious illness and spent six months in hospital, some of it on bed rest. That was at the end of 2012. The illness I had has quite a high mortality rate and I'm glad to be alive so you'd think I'd get the rest of the stuff in perspective but no. Part of the problem is it's like a constant reminder when I roll over at night and my knee starts hurting (can't sleep in certain positions, on my front or on that side) or I go to pick something up off the floor and my knee is in pain, or I try to go to some shops or see a friend and my knee hurts. The physios say there's no more they can do and the doctors don't advise another surgery. So it's a case of living with it which is what I try to do. I won't give up and I try to make the best out of the situation by focusing on other things (I tried to learn the guitar recently).

I miss running, it made me very happy.

I've been running off and on (months at a time) for over 40 years. I started at age 11/12 when my parents bought me Jim Fixx's Complete Book of Running in 1977. I lived that book for years. I always found running extremely difficult but I pushed myself hard in junior high and high school PE classes. I learned so much from my own research that I knew more about the sport than my school coaches. I did horribly on our middle school cross country team but I still loved the sport. In high school I ran a 4:40 mile and a 7:50 1.5 miles, but I got hooked on the weight training and bodybuilding bug by age 16. Running quickly took a back seat. I threw myself into cycling and triathlon training after high school but never seriously. In college I was running and cycling a lot but lifting weights more. My mile, 5K, and 10K ability and times really took a hit due to the added muscle. My mile time slowed to 5:29 by age 20 despite running more than in high school. By my mid-20s running was sort of 3-4 months on, 6-8 months off and this pattern continued until my early-40s. I had lots of major running injuries during this time like plantar faciitis, shin splints, Achilles tendinitis, stress fracture, etc. After that it was 2 or 3 months or so per year. In early 2023 I decided to stop the pattern and move on with my life. I just don't feel good during or even after a run anymore. I've been strength training all of my post-teen life and it makes me feel ABSOLUTELY wonderful and always has. I also love to walk, run short sprints, and ride me bicycle off-road. When I see people running easily down the road for miles it seems like a magic trick. I've ALWAYS found running to be extremely difficult but powered-through the pain and misery with the hopes that it would get easier and that maybe I'd win races. When I decided to just run for health and discovered other fitness activities that are healthier, running was dropped like first-period high school French class.

I signed up for a local 5k and ran 20:11. That was it for me.

Terrible bump of a thread, thanks no neck

Early arthritis causes by genetic defect in hips.

"Open hips" -- hip sockets roughly half the coverage of normal sockets, meaning the pounding of all those miles and track races was absorbed by a smaller area, wearing out the cartilage by age 30. One hip replaced, one to go...

I quit due to underperforming which led to burnout or vice versa in college. I went from this successful hs runner to extremely tired and slower than I ever cared to be at a D1 powerhouse. Injuries as well. I tried everything but eventually left and took a good couple years off.. It was nice to just live and not worry about a morning workout or preserving myself for a race. However after a couple years off I did return to running and felt like myself again. I still run and enjoy it but it's just part of my day. As you age you realize movement is important for overall health not just being fast. As a parent it keeps me fit and able to keep up with them as well.

Was crushing it through college super successful PR wise but got a girl on the team pregnant our senior year.

Started working full time with a new kid, wife finished out her college eligibility. There wasn’t a lot of time or money so my running got squeezed out

Last year I overdid it. Too many workouts, too many long runs, too many races. I was doing a run and felt discomfort in the adductor, but it was mild enough to ignore. Two days later I did a workout and the adductor strained. Probably grade 1. Jogged home in some pain. Had a race scheduled for the Sunday, had a few days off and then did the race anyway. I got to start in the front pack and didn't want to miss out. As I set off I felt something go, which I now know was my adductor tendon. For about two weeks after it hurt to get up from a chair or swing my leg around to get in and out of a car. Attempted a run a few weeks later and bizzarely felt ok. Ran for the rest of the year. However I knew something was up as I always had discomfort on that side of my groin when trying to sit up. Had a rest of 6 weeks over Christmas and when I came back that's when the problems started. My groin would start to hurt after 20-30 minutes on every run and the pain would spread across to the other side. For a while I thought I had osteitis pubis. In reality the tendon was damaged and my muscles were detrained. To compound matters I also pulled my hamstring. At this point I had no choice but to rest. It took 14 weeks until I could sit up, lie down or turn over in bed without bed in the groin. First run back I managed 5 minutes at a shuffling pace before I fell over. My healed hamstring was so tight it felt almost rigid. I basically tripped over my own feet. 14 weeks of inactivity must have allowed a lot of scar tissue to form. There was, however, no pain in the groin. From then on it took about 6 weeks of rehab - building the runs up slowly and running without pain in my hamstrings which was acomplished by strengthening exercises. First I was able to do 3 miles without proximal hamstring teninopathy pain/sciatica shooting sensation, then 4 miles, then 6, 6 again and then 10. Did 30 miles last week for the first time since January. The thousands of miles I ran over the years have meant I have come back to form quickly. There's no tiredness or fatigue after 10 milers. After a long break I have regained some of my interest in running again. The most important thing has been being able to move and exercise without pain. The key for me was long rest (4-5 months), a very healthy diet, being very light and doing bodyweight strengthening exercises.

Definitely didn't overdo it on the paragraph usage in your post

Quit competitive running in my mid 20’s. Just got burnt out and wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I also realised that I was only ever going to be above average at best. This was at 5 and 10 Ks as I sucked at track and I didn’t have the patience to train for anything longer. I laboured on for a short while and half heartedly trained for my one and only triathlon. Quit that sport right after completing the race on an old borrowed bike as well.

Switched to soccer ( a big mistake that my knees still constantly remind me about to this day, and played for well over ten years in a competitive local league. Arthritis in the knees and a few minor tears and debris in them made me quit. At that time I still had some competitive zeal, so I took up training for and competing in some gym racing competitions. The format was a variety of cardio, light weight high rep exercises and body weight movements, set out in a lane, where people raced against each other. Most competitions ended with a treadmill run of various inclines, for anything from 800 metres to a mile. So my running at this time was a part of my training and all treadmill based.

This period didn’t last long before I got bored, plus realised that the sloppy form used by many competitors was an injury waiting to happen. Plus I started to suffer injuries of my own as I entered my forties. My training then centred around the safety aspect, and trying to minimise the injuries and staying away from, or altering activities that had an injury risk. There is no denying that running has its own fare share of injuries, so to this end, it became only a part of my cardio training and when it was done it was done Galloway run / walk style, with no real “push” for PB’s or times. If they happened…they happened.
Oddly enough I found this to be far more relaxing and enjoyable, even if done on a treadmill. I look forward to the couple of runs I do a week now, indoors or out. This coincided with my reduced desire to be competitive. It may be because I’m older, but I no longer have the desire, or need to validate my worth as a person via athletic competition. It’s not like anyone, outside of myself or a few like minded friends doing the same activity, ever cared about how I did, or how good or bad I was anyway.

My recent training is now just geared towards health and longevity benefits. So overall, my volume and intensity, for both weights and cardio, is way down on what it used to be, and I couldn’t be happier. I only wished that I’d done things this way right from the start, wasted less time on competition and training for it, and instead devoted my time and energy towards other areas of my life. Heck I don’t even have the tin pot trophies and medals that I managed to accumulate over the years. My wife made me get rid of them as she said they were cluttering the place up.