Good News, Bad News

Cover story on this week's TIME magazine proclaims that exercise does not contribute to weight loss.

Sure, we all know/knew this. But did we need to be reminded? It's hard enough to get out there three times a week. At least there was the dim hope that maybe this was helping you edge, ever so slowly, back toward a 23-year-old's body...

But, on the good news side of things, the NYT cites several scientific reports to conclude that running is good for your knees: "despite entrenched mythology to the contrary, runners don’t seem prone to degenerating knees." Continuing:

"Instead, recent evidence suggests that running may actually shield somewhat against arthritis, in part because the knee develops a kind of motion groove. A group of engineers and doctors at Stanford published a study in the February issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery that showed that by moving and loading your knee joint, as you do when walking or running, you “condition” your cartilage to the load. It grows accustomed to those particular movements. You can run for miles, decades, a lifetime, without harming it. But if this exquisite balance is disturbed, usually by an injury, the loading mechanisms shift, the moving parts of the knee are no longer in their accustomed alignment and a “degenerative pathway” seems to open. The cartilage, like an unbalanced tire, wears away. Pain, tissue disintegration and, eventually, arthritis can follow."

Upshot: Get out there and run. It may not help you drop any weight, but your knees will love you for it.

Pain is no friend of mine

"No pain no gain." Or, as Emil Zapotek is reputed to have said: It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys."

Yes, well, Zapotek was a machine. I'm no machine.

Being sidelined by some achilles tendonitis, missing out on some of the best days to run here in Vermont (July and August), does not have me singing the praises of pain.

Pain is not your friend. Pain is not the path to gain.

Pain is the lunatic hitchhiker you pick up at night in the desert, who keeps saying "just one more exit, man, I promise."

I run, therefore...

There are two types of runners in this world: those who like "out and backs" and those who like "circular runs." I am firmly rooted in the latter camp.

Out and backs are simply too linear, rational and calculating. A run should not be sliced, diced or folded in half.

Circular runs are zen-like, exploratory; they are about the process of running, rather than the goal. They emphasize the journey over the destination, the transformation over the outcome.

Sure both types of runs take you back to where you started. But I always feel better after finishing a circular run. I feel more like I have done the full distance instead of half the distance twice.