What did (or would) it take for you to quit running?

i'm so done with running..... i only do it because i'm good. but i hate it.

A permanent foot injury was all it took for me. Forty-three years and counting.

Injury... cartilage degeneration and essentially arthritis at age 29...do to repeated ankle sprains in prior years.

For me, it was a combination of burnout and mediocrity. Maybe I wasn't mediocre, but I was in my own eyes. My PR's got more and more mediocre as I got older due to over-training (that's my theory, at least).

I ran a 4:54 1600m in 7th grade, a 4:25/1:59.1 1600/800 in 9th, a 4:15 as a junior and low 15's 5k XC as a junior. My senior year was a complete wash. By the time I was a college freshman I was running just 33:xx in 10k XC. Sometimes I still think about "what could have been." Maybe a low-14 5k and a 4:05 mile.

Additionally, I had an intense drive to lift weights that began somewhere around my senior year in HS that made the choice to hang up the spikes that much easier. Roughly 8 years after calling it quits I'm a happy weightlifter/bodybuilder who can still squeak out a 5:40 mile. :)

Once I get to the point where I'm having to do more work for the same results, I will quit

After 4:54 you jumped the shark .

Boredom, honestly. Still jog around the neighborhood for a couple miles, but do other activities for actual fitness. Foing out for an hour run now is completely out of the question. Zero interest. Still enjoy reading about and watching the sport though, and making dumb ass comments on a dumb ass forum.

No sh!t, Sherlock.

That is almost world class talent. I know several guys who were sub-4 or at 3:40 level as a college runner who were at 4:10-4:12 for the mile as a HS senior. Steve Spence, Jim Stintzi, Tim Hacker, George Malley, Herb Lindsay, Greg Meyer.

4:25/1:59 as a 9th grader is otherworldy talent. Alan Webb ran 4:20 for 1600m and was one of the top talents the world has ever seen. A hard-training runner who still runs 4:35 as a senior is mediocre, you were something special.

So many on here bash times that are actually pretty awesome.

Then the rest say they quit running. Due to injuries- fine. But many, just because- & undoubtedly many of them previously bashed times that were pretty awesome.

Are you his boyfriend ?

He's full of it .

Getting multiple stress fractures in the exact same area ended running for me. Doctors have no idea why and nothing I tried to fix the issue worked. I can run a few miles at most once or twice a month and it takes forever to even recover from that.

Death?No.I will continue running after death.

DONE and FINISHED wrote:

Injuries, mediocrity, burnout, etc...what finally caused you to hang up the spikes? Or, if you're still running, what would it take?

Childbirth

28-years-old and still fighting the good fight, but I've seriously considered quitting before. Once in college and once more recently. Reason is frustration with injuries, either long-term chronic ones or getting hurt, coming back, and getting hurt over and over again.

I keep going mostly because I'm not satisfied with what I've done yet. My PRs are no where near what my "potential" was, and I just honestly can't accept that those are all I'm ever going to do. Lately I wonder if I'm like the Ryan Hall Kickstarter documentary. Keep putting off ending the story because you want to finish on a good note, but eventually you have to accept that it's over. I hope that's not me anyway. Good thing is my room for improvement is much much greater than Hall's.

Ideally, I'd like to run my whole life, but that might be up to my body as it'll give up before my mind does.

Also, this thread reminded me of the Once a Runner chapter called "Breaking Down":

http://chesnes.com/personal/docs/oar17.pdf

I ran competitively in college (not very good at all) and continued to run competitively through my 20's. I loved it and was continuing to get better even with lower mileage. However, I kept getting injured despite doing a lot to prevent the injuries. I realized later that I never had good biomechanics and thus, my body wasn't durable to handle the strain of training on a consistent basis (on the other hand, I have a college teammate in his 40's who still runs 60-70 mpw and has never had a major injury in his career even though he never stretches, rarely warms up, etc).

At 28, I started training with a group after training alone since college and started to improve again. However, about a year later, I hurt my IT band in a workout and could barely walk the next few days. By that point, I was almost 30, tired of always getting injured, and had too many other things going on in my life (including a full time job and coaching HS track and XC on the side). I wasn't going to get to the level I wanted, so I stopped competing and scaled back my miles to just stay relatively fit.

Over the next decade, every time I would get the urge to train and compete again, I'd read one of Chris Lear's books and remembered the pain from training. That was pretty much what I needed to realize I needed to do something else with my free time. Although I sometimes miss the training and racing, I have no regrets. I gave it all I had until I was almost 30 and my body was telling me to stop. If I had kept going, I may have been able to get a little faster, but not enough for me to feel like I really missed anything.

fonzi wrote:

He's full of it .

I wanted to post a spoof of a typical letsrunner where I claimed amazing running times but gave it up to be a bodybuilder, but someone beat me to it.

I was also going to add that I don't have time to run because I'm busy counting my millions and banging supermodels on my yacht.

If a more time efficient form of cardiovascular exercise that you can compete in comes around- swimming doesn't count because you have to get to the pool- you can run just about anywhere.

rjm33 wrote:

Death?

No.

I will continue running after death.

Same here.

DONE and FINISHED wrote:

Injuries, mediocrity, burnout, etc...what finally caused you to hang up the spikes? Or, if you're still running, what would it take?