Little to no grass

i run up to 100 miles a week on concrete and asphalt. Ive been running on hard surfaces my whole life. I take osteobiflex everyday to help my joints, i take ice baths frequently also.

Ask Frank Shorter and the FTC guys.

I recently came across some articles at the Sports Illustrated site that brought back memories.

Bachelor, Shorter, Meyer, Rodgers, Salazar.

My personal issue is with the sudden change in shoe design around 1993, spearheaded by NIKE. I wore the ancient and honorable Air Pegasus faithfully until '94. NIKE began screwing around with it and I have never really LIKED a shoe since.

I understand that they're in the business to make money, but couldn't they toss a bone to we old-timers and toss out a model that used the OLD processes? I never EVER got injured using Air Pegs from 1987-1993. After that, and the initial monotongue version of the Air Peg which spelled doom for my PF, it hasn't been the same.

Do you run for runnings' sake or for competition?

There was a time in my life that I NEVER raced, but was happy to run for an hour.

Has anyone else had that experience?

Yes, I ran for weight control.

You can make an effort once or twice a week to run on grass, even if it's just doing laps around a soccer field (if you do this, you might as well go barefoot to get those benefits too).

Just make sure your shoes aren't worn down, etc etc, and you should be fine. You can still train at a high level exclusively on pavement, you just have to be more careful with mileage changes and things. Or at least, I do. Some people can run forever on asphalt without a problem. Soft surfaces aren't a prerequisite for training at a high level, although they help a lot.

One summer I averaged 80 miles a week running in areas with very little grass. Never got injured. A few things, don't let your sneakers wear down too far, you want to keep having good support so make sure to get new sneakers often. Try and break up some of your runs so not every single run is on concrete, I probably averaged 5-6 days on concrete running doubles but always found 1 or 2 days to do something else. Run to a track and run on that surface once a week, maybe even try a workout. Another day, on the weekend, drive somewhere out of the city and run. Also, stretch a lot, and if necessary ice. I rarely iced but made sure to stretch every single day.

Hope those helps, however, it all comes down to your body, I know people who don't have the body cut out to run on concrete and get injured just running 2 days a week on concrete.

Probably a very obvious distinction, but asphault is preferable to concrete for running, yes?