High Impact
On Saturday, I did something I haven’t done in a long time: I went on a run.
And not just a short jog: a 2.8 mile run with a friend who’s been a runner for multiple years.
At about the two-mile mark, I started huffing and puffing. My legs were hurting. I would’ve slowed to a walk if my friend hadn’t urged me to push through. It took all my willpower (and some desperate prayer) to reach the end of the path. Afterwards, we walked a while longer to cool off, and I did some leg stretches to make sure I wouldn’t be completely incapacitated later.
It’s now Monday, and I’m walking a little funny because my calves and hamstrings are complaining. The fact that running 2.8 miles was at the very edge of my ability was a little bit of a wake-up call, honestly. I’ve run 5K’s in the past, and I used to run them routinely for exercise (with occasional short periods of fast-walking) because the timing added up to around 30 minutes. But I’ve lost much of that ability.
I stopped running several years ago mainly because my knees started hurting and I wasn’t sure how to train in a way that wouldn’t make them hate me. I would put on compression braces, but that didn’t fully resolve the issue. I realized how high-impact running is on the body, so I decided to stop making my leg joints take the force of pounding concrete.
A couple things have happened in the years since then.
First, I switched to wearing zero-drop, barefoot-style shoes every day. Once I had adjusted to wearing spacious, non-supportive shoes and feeling the ground under me everywhere I went, any knee pain I had basically vanished.
My feet and ankle muscles got stronger because they weren’t relying on foam support anymore. My knees started bending without loudly popping or aching. My stride also slightly changed. It seems that the cushioning, arch support, and narrow toe box in my old running shoes was actually detrimental to my physical activity. My feet eventually became able to take much more of the impact that my running shoes had been cushioning me from. And after Saturday’s run, I was pleased to find that my knees barely hurt.
The second thing that has happened in the years since I stopped running is I started challenging myself more. I’ve been increasingly interested in seeing what I’m capable of doing physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Saturday’s run was a good challenge. I got a lot of “data” from it. I’m not as fit as I used to be, but the experience could’ve been a whole lot worse. So I think it’s time I embraced the pain of training and got back to moving my body in more challenging ways (slowly and within reason, of course). High-impact activities, exercise being just one example, produce increased endurance and resilience as a reward.
I’ve told many people recently that I’d like to one day be one of those 80-year-olds who can walk without needing a cane. Maybe I’ll end up like Dale “Grey Beard” Sanders, a man who’s currently trying to reclaim a record as the oldest man to through-hike the Appalachian Trail! Along with my cleaner diet and other activities I’ve been practicing recently, hopefully I can be a better steward than ever of the body and life God has given me.