I was a running addict – but pushing myself to my limits led to two knee replacements | Rod Gilchrist

I I prepare for an anesthetist to insert a needle into my back in a busy London hospital, ahead of a planned operation to replace my knee. Because I know this can be painful, I ask a fellow patient how he came up with the idea to use the injection. “Two joints of good dope worked for me,” he admitted. I have yet to try that, but this is my second left knee replacement in less than 15 years – an increasingly common story as our population ages and obesity puts increasing pressure on our joints.

More than two million hip and knee replacements have been carried out in the UK since the early 2000s and waiting lists continue to grow. By 2060, demand for hip and knee joint replacement (based on data for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man) is estimated to increase by almost 40%.

But I think there’s another reason for these rising numbers: I blame the fitness gurus. Joe Wicks and his ilk, with their fashionable shorts and bulging quads, all promise that we can become leaner, sexier and more athletic versions of ourselves if we just follow their training programs.

Park fun runs will improve your cardiovascular health, they promise. Pass on intense exercise and risk diabetes, stroke or heart disease, says the ominous warning. But speaking from experience: pounding the road for decades has not always been healthy.

I was once a running junkie. Running is addictive. It triggers a rush of endorphins that trigger the ‘runner’s high’ – and like drugs, you need the fix more and more often. A missed session can cause feelings of guilt, even anxiety and a drive to train harder.

This obsession started when I was a teenager. By the age of 16 I was already 400m champion, London champion, Southern England champion, second fastest in my age group in the country, and selected by the Amateur Athletic Association as a future Olympic athlete.

To achieve this dream, I was told by coaches to push my body to a level close to collapse. Vomiting after hard winter sessions on the track was the norm. These sessions were often so grueling that I felt like my eyes were popping out of my head. Sometimes they were followed by blinding headaches. My mother, a state registered nurse, was deeply concerned and advised against such physically damaging endeavors; that a price would have to be paid for it later in life. But I loved running, and later in life I continued to push myself to my limits. I was so conditioned to run as fast as I could that I just couldn’t stop it, even though I was afraid of what it was doing to my body.

This dependency has landed me on the operating table due to a tear in the Achilles tendon, numerous tears in the hamstrings and muscles, a damaged hernia caused by strength training and a heart valve replacement. I have had a knee cartilage repair, followed by two knee replacements. Now when I see middle-aged men puffing through the hard city streets, I want to show them my X-rays.

Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that ‘fun runs’ in moderation will result in the kind of physical breakdowns that have plagued me. Much of the evidence on exercise and musculoskeletal health suggests that running has beneficial effects on joints in later life, not to mention its mental health benefits. But pushing yourself past the pain point is not good. And the simple truth is that as the body ages, you can’t keep doing what you used to do.

The problem is, once you catch the running bug, it’s hard to scale back, even when your body asks for it. I’ve seen this obsession with running not only in champions, but also in regular park runners, who, once addicted to the chemical release that comes after a satisfying session, feel an overwhelming desire to keep going on the road and run longer and longer distances. to run in pursuit. of even greater highlights. A wise coach, who had seen the damage done to marathon runners, once told me that the distance was only for “horses and fools.”

My last knee operation was performed in the orthopedic department at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. My eight-day stay in the men’s surgery while I recovered was educational. The NHS may be under enormous pressure (the total hospital waiting list is almost 8 million, up from around 4 million before the pandemic), but the kindness, attention and advanced surgical standards made painful knee replacement surgery bearable. Concerned for my well-being, the support staff even sent a guitarist to play soothingly at my bedside while I recovered.

I am now on the mend but have been banned from jogging by my surgeon, the brilliant Luke Jones, himself a former rugby star who understands my passion for running. But unfortunately, I’m just a diehard repeat offender. I’m so conditioned to running that even though I know the damage it can do, I fear I’ll soon be tempted to hit the track again. The truth is, when I run, I feel sixteen. It’s the only shortcut back to youth I know, as desperate as that may sound. Another thing I’ve learned (pardon the pun) is that running can be really bad for your health in the long run.