[hsitz]

I'm 56 years old, run 2500-3000 miles per year, and have many friends who do the same. I don't know of anyone with a "chronic" injury from running, and to be honest I don't even know what that might be.

"Overuse" injuries are quite common, though. They're injuries that you get from doing more than your body is capable of at the time (often just trying to do "too much too soon"). These injuries go away when you reduce the stress on your body. They can last a long time if you continue to overstress your body by running too much (or failing to fix problems in your running form, which is a form of that), but they are not what most people would think of as "chronic" injuries (that stick with you indefinitely). You have ongoing overuse injuries only if you continually run more than your body can handle.

I would also add that just because you get an overuse injury at, say, 40 miles/week of training doesn't mean you can never run more than that injury free. You need to reduce stress, run less, let your body strengthen (or fix running form problems) and then slowly increase training again. Years ago I had issues when building average miles up over around 30 miles/week. They took some time to work through. Now I run average 50+ mile weeks for most of the year and I'm perfectly fine (actually feel much stronger and in better health than before). I need to be careful during periods when I'm ramping up to 80+ miles/week for an upcoming race, increasing stress on my body. Running injury free can require a lot of problem solving.

As an aside, I did run down at the Caballo Blanco race with the Tarahumara down in the Copper Canyons last March. They changed the course this year and made it a lot more "technical" (more trail running with lots of rocks). The winner of the race, Miguel Lara, wore running shoes, not huarache sandals. He has won many times before wearing huaraches, but chose to switch to shoes this year because of the increased technicality (primarily rocks) of the course.

[ordinaryperson]

I run roughly the same amount injury-free in regular old Nike sneakers. As you say, the key is slow build up.

Virtually every non-runner I know, whenever I mention something about running or racing, tells me they "can't/don't want to run" because it will "destroy their knees" when in fact runners have stronger knees than non-runners [1].

It'd be if you were a weakling and said, "I don't want to lift weights because that will destroy my joints." If you lifted weights too heavy too soon, yes, but the way to getting stronger is through slow progression. Which people don't want to do.

It's just a matter of consistency and steady effort. Beginnners always rave to me about their 17-20 mile long runs when my question is "How many miles per week have you run? And for how many weeks in a row?"

The Five Fingers stuff, glad that works for a small segment of people (I even own a pair) but for most it's just going to end in stress fractures.

[1] https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a20804690/runners-have-muc...

[juskrey]

The (not)funny thing is that everyone in my long running community were telling exactly the same thing about injuries.. And, at closer examination, everyone lied (including myself). "I am happy, nobody has injuries here either".. Except when people start to vanish for months and turns out they were struggling with some chronic issue for a looong time before that, "working out" the pain (yeah, chronic injuries tend to vanish into the work out, only to pop out later), until the pain became too big to bear with.

Final revelations came when I discovered how many people I knew were on steroids (to heal fast) and painkillers, all amateur runners and cyclists.