I went for a lovely run this morning. As I am not Mo Farah, I had the privilege of seeing all the beautiful autumn colours in the vineyards, feeling the happy vibes, and majorly riling Gary the Gremlin, who was (of course) intent on doing other things this morning. He trailed along behind me for the entire run, pulling his shorts out of his bum and wailing that he needed the loo and wanted to go home.
On finishing our "nearly-8-K", Gary nose-dived into his armchair, sniffed and informed me that all this exercise would lead me down the slippery path of self-destruction, and that my mother would be proved right when my knees finally gave in after all this torture.
So is running really bad for your knees? We've all heard it said ominously by non-runners, at least once. Off we went on a trip around Tinternet (spot that Peter Kay reference there) and I found a report about a very interesting research paper (real science as opposed to Facebook "90 year-old granny transforms herself into five year-old child with a bunch of bananas and a pot of Dulux" science). The researchers didn't set out to study runners, but saw that part of their sample group had run regularly or continued to do so. They expected to see damage to their knees, but actually discovered the complete opposite: runners are less likely to suffer from knee osteoporosis. Gary is sulking. The article is here: runnersworld.com/general-in...
As for me, I feel like I'm the Hobnob of the running world.