Since beginnig running, and especially since beginning to run really long distances, I’ve had a great number of people make annoying comments about how it will affect my knees and weaken my joints. I especially get these comments from those who knew me during my previous life as near 300-pound football player in college.

I’ve always shrugged it off and, I’m sure, sounded very corny and nearly brainwashed when telling them that from what I’ve read the studies have shown that running is not bad for the knees. Even typing that I feen entirely lame.

But now, I feel I can argue this with some real zeal, because having been off from running for nearly four months now I can offer myself up as PROOF that running that does not negatively affect the knees, and of that I am POSITIVE.

Flashback to the winter of 2007…I had just finished my life as a football player and was taking up running as A) a means to get in shape for baseball and B) because I knew I wanted to continue to run and approach it as a competitive avenue after baseball. I dove right into it, hardly taking a break between the football season and ended and beginning to run.

During the first few months, whilst making myself a bit more svelt, there was some soreness in the knees. However, it was the residual soreness that comes from spending 2+ hours in a 3-point stance. The soreness in my my knees was never made worse as I began running, but only got better until eventually disappearing completely by the time June of ‘08 rolled around.

Between then and December of 2010, the only knee pain I’ve had at all came courtesy of eating it in a parking lot and landing knee-first on a speed bump; that event led to a month off due to a bout of bursitis.

As I sit here now, nearly four months removed from anything at all in the way of running, I have been experiencing some knee soreness and pain coming back gradually over the last few months. Why? Shouldn’t my knees be feeling great because I haven’t done anything traumatic to them in such a long time. Sadly, no. They feel like hell simply because they have spent the last few months nearly dormant. Sure, there’s been some biking and elliptical in the interim, but in an attempt to allow the achilles to heel as quickly as possible, I’ve even cut back on those pretty dramatically over the past month. And now, without any of those stimuli, my knees are doing what muscles and lungs do when they lay dormant for an extended amount of time, they are weakening.

Now, as happy as I am to be able to offer up this story the next time someone tells me I’m an idiot for running long distance because my knees will suffer, I’m mainly upset on account of the fact that this newfound knee soreness is likely to make the return to running less a little more tough than it ought to be. But, I can enter confident in the fact that a return to running will do nothing but make my knees feel better.

And, on the running front, things have been going pretty decently over the last week. I’ve logged more minutes with zero pain over the last week than I’ve logged w/o pain since December. I made it out for 35 minutes of easy, barefoot running last week. Today, I made it for 15 minutes barefoot at lunch and ended the session with 5 minutes of shod running in Keen A86 trail shoes on the track. I was happy with my ability to maintain barefoot-form with shoes on, although it felt pretty awkward - as it probably should.

There haven’t been any achilles issues, at least not associated with running. I did notice a bit of achilles discomfort on Saturday and Sunday, but I think that can be attributed primarily to spending nearly 20 hours driving over the weekend. The only running-related issues I’ve noticed are some very tight calves, but some stick massage, self-administered trigger point and some ART massage last Friday seem to have those issues under control. I think the true test so far has been to see how I feel the day after running as opposed to later in the day of running. So, to really gauge whether today’s jaunt on the football field and track was a good one, I’ll have to wait ‘til tomorrow morning. But, as of right now, things seems to be looking good and on the upswing.