If a mountaineering enthusiast or professional aims to climb a 7,000-meter peak, they have options. The same goes for an 8,000-meter peak. If they want to climb a 9,000-meter peak, they can fool themselves with Everest. But if they want to climb a 10,000-meter peak, simply put, they cannot: no mountain on Earth measures 10,000 meters in height.
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For runners, that limit does not exist: there are always more kilometers to run. And without that limit, and with the influence of social media, some tend to overexert themselves and overtrain. At that point, sport is no longer health.
That is the conclusion reached by the British clinic chain One Body LDN, which conducted a study showing that running-related injuries have doubled in the last five years. The reasons for this increase, the study argues, are that an increasing number of runners tend to push themselves too hard and too fast, follow generic training plans from the internet, and underestimate the physical wear caused by running long distances.
“Ego can override doing the basic and boring, starting little by little,” says Kurt Johnson, director of the study
“The most common injuries we see are knee problems such as iliotibial band syndrome, patellofemoral pain, ‘runner’s knee,’ and various tendinopathies,” Kurt Johnson, director of the clinics that conducted the study, explains to The Times. He adds frequent injuries such as tibial periostitis, ankle sprains, Achilles tendon problems, hip pain, and lower back pain.
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Contributing to all this are the so-called runfluencers — a blend of runners and influencers — who document their training, sell plans, and gather large audiences around aspirational lifestyles. “They see people posting videos and clips online to look cool, different, or healthy, and they want to do the same,” says Johnson.
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“Ego can override doing the basic and boring, starting little by little,” he adds, while denouncing how some runfluencers encourage continuing training despite injuries by appealing to a misguided spirit of overcoming.
Johnson also points to the human capacity for self-deception. Novice runners “may feel good the first week,” but it is from “the second, third, or fourth week when that accumulation of fatigue can cause injuries.”
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