I’m near your weight (185lbs, 72.5in)

I don’t have issues with running - I’d recommend some high cushion shoes like Nike Zoom Fly 3s for injury free training.

Also, you can limit your exposure to hard outdoor surfaces and do some runs on the treadmill. Ease into mileage outdoors.

Dunk your feet in ice after runs if needed.

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

Thanks mate this is good to hear, I have just purchased a brand new pair of new balance 1080 version 10 which I believe are their most cushioned shoe. Yup I used to do all my running on treadmill in my tri days so I will certainly use a treadmill for some of my running now but do plan to incorporate a bit more trail running this time round.

Your thoughts on a 60min a day 80/20 split vs a barry p style plan?

I'm similar weight / height and also need to manage knee and calf problems regularly.

I find that intensity brings on injuries much more than anything else and so am very sparing with how I use it. If you are building up to running 6 x 1hr a week I would have that as the initial goal to build your body's infrastructure and resilience. I find running with a metronome a couple of sessions a week at +10 on my normal cadence also helps as it provides intensity with a shorter stride which reduces the load on my knees and feet.

When adding intensity later I don't do anything shorter than 3-4 minutes as this lets me go fast enough to build fitness above my threshhold but with lower injury risk than real short intervals.

My run times when taking this approach this are competitive enough for my size at about 1.25 HIM and 3.10 IM.

Thanks for the advice and reply mate.

The right shoes (for you) are one of the most important components. I'm 180lbs and found that once I switched to the Nike Epic Reacts I could withstand a lot more mileage than with less cushioned shoes (ex. my former Saucony Freedom ISOs).

I've also found that treadmills are a far more forgiving surface than asphalt; though with shelter-in-place gym treadmills aren't an option atm.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Every time I stopped lifting and kept running I'd pick up niggles. I'm 205ish right now. Squats, Deads, Calf Raises, hugely necessary.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I’m a similar height and weight too 181cm 84kg and run when I’m leanest and best form similar times to Melt. The biggest help to my running has been 100-150m hill repeats up to x20 with a jog recovery. My standard run is a 3km jog to hill and return cool down. The strength work has helped my running form and lifts your fitness with a lower risk of injury.

I’m heavier as well a few pounds lighter and a bit taller.

I really think you need to avoid the 20% for a while. I’m a huge proponent of running all your miles aerobic until you have a big base. For me when running only, I would say something like 60 mpw.

During Tri season I run less and mix in a bit of intensity. But for pure running the injury risk / reward just isn’t there. Especially when you are on the heavy side.

I am also very good about rolling my calves to make sure nothing tightens on you and pulls on the smaller muscles / ligaments in my feet.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice/help guys, yeh I think avoiding the 20% for a while might be a good idea. Might just keep doing the 20% part on the bike and elliptical until my body catches up to the demands of running again.

Hey Bone Crusher!

Kudos to you to start back up again. I would ask what the goals are for running? is it to get faster? do you just want to run 6 days a week? Just running races or triathlons too? I would just ease back into it with just easy runs and then add intensity. Especially with injuries.

Im about your same size 5'10 184lbs and now I run about 3-4 days a week (30/35 miles) and now faster than when I ran 7 days a week pushing 70-80 mpw. definitely not the fastest guy but 1:19 HM.

For shoes, Im not a huge fan of flats for racing or training but never had any issues with any shoes really. Im really loving the new balance fuel cell TC. Also a big fan of the nike pegasus turbo.

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https://www.strava.com/athletes/11645943 https://www.instagram.com/timeforicecream/

To be honest my goals for running are too boost my fitness for mountain running on strava. I have recently gotten onto strava and have an interest in running/hiking up mountains as fast as possible and testing myself against others on the segment for strava. I have found this to be great fun, also my eldest boy is turning 9 and I want him to start running with me. My boys have done a few 5k races and my wife usually runs the half distance in these races I would like to be able to run them with my boys and maybe pace them until they can out run me.....

When you said heavy, I was expecting you to say 250lbs.

I was 225ish at my first IM. My lightest race weight was 190lbs and was good enough for a 3:12 IM marathon. You won't see 2:40 marathon times, but its not heavy enough to be a concern for running.

The shoes do seem to make a big difference in how running feels on my body and I rarely ran over 35mpw (one speed day, one easy, and one long). Exception being leading up to a 50 mile ultra, during which I also didn't get any injuries. Sometimes I feel a tingle in my knees after ~300 miles on a pair of shoes and it goes away with a new pair.

I also agree with the comment about lifting. When I squat and deadlift as part of my routine, I feel benerally less injury prone.

Of course, it's all anecdotal. But 185 should be perfectly manageable to run with

I also weigh 85 kg and that is on the heavy side for runners, but not extraordinary.

But if I see that you want to run 6 times 60 minutes a week even with 20% intensity and you say already you are injury prone, I do not think you can expect else than injuries.
I would say start with 3 times 30 minutes without any intensity, if that goes build it up to 3 times 60 minutes but you will be a year further then.

I am a rather good runner but 6 times 60 minutes with 80/20: I do not do that and I think that is an insane quantity and intensity. Ok I also bike and swim, but I guess you do not want to stop weightlifting I guess?

My advice is in stark contrast to a few of your other responses.
If you have had problems with foot and knee pain/injuries then adding cushioning is IMO extremely unlikely to cure them. Depending on the specific cause of the problems, added cushioning may help with the symptoms or may make it worse, but there's no mechanism for this approach to fix the underlying problem.
Since you're starting back and presumably will do low volume initially, I'd suggest it's the perfect time to think about tweaking your run. A low cadence overstriding run seems like a likely culprit, and highly cushioned shoes facilitate this. I'd recommend using very little cushioning, if any so that you avoid resuming bad habits as you start back. Fairly minimal shoes will prevent you from overstriding without being uncomfortable. It'll also strengthen your feet and calves - this can be a little slow since bone, tendons and ligaments have less blood supply than muscles, but you'll notice the difference.

I used to have regular problems with knee pain and sore feet. I'm 1.78m (5'10") and 83kg (183lbs). I used to be about 10kg heavier back when I had problems and solved them.
I had to stop running over 10 years ago due to knee pain and during the following year or so, I did quite a bit of physio and tried to restart running on several occasions. Every time I tried to restart, the knee pain came back instantly, like within the first 5mins, and was severe after even a 10 minute run. That's when I started cycling! However about a year into this I decided to give it another shot, but that there was no point doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So I bought some Merrell Trail Gloves. These are/were very minimalist shoes that basically consisted of a thin rubber sole to protect your feet from abrasion or sharp objects, but zero cushioning foam and zero heel-toe drop. I started by walking around in them a bit (this felt odd, you don't walk the same in shoes as in bare feet - these felt like being in bare feet). Then I went for a few 15-20 minutes walks, during which I'd intermittently run for a couple of hundred meters. That was enough to figure out how to run so that the lack of cushioning didn't cause pain. In fact I almost immediately realised that while it felt very odd compared to what I'd done before, it was actually much more comfortable and fluid. The secret unsurprisingly, is to shorten your stride to avoid overstriding. You can only do that by either running very slowly or increasing your cadence dramatically. My cadence went from about high 150s to low 180s overnight. I suggest ignoring any advice to gradually increase cadence. That's not how it works. you can't gradually transition between very different styles of running. You're doing one or the other. Attempting a gradual transition is IMO doomed to constantly drifting back to what you know and if you do change things it may well be a weird hybrid that doesn't really work. Anyway, in my case I forced myself to run with a dramatically shorter stride, it clicked in the space of a single session, I found a second rhythm that felt better than what I'd been doing for years, and the feeling of oddness went away very quickly over the couple of short runs. I gradually built up range as my feet and calves adapted. My calves were extremely tight and sore for the first few weeks and my feet occasionally felt a little bruised, but nothing that felt like an injury - just development. Within 2 or 3 months I was running 5km+ without any knee or foot discomfort, which I hadn't done since I was a kid. In fact the higher cadence, shorter stride style feels like I remember running being when I was a kid! I think those of us who don't run continuously from childhood, forget how to do it properly and cushioned, highly structured running shoes sabotage us when we try to return to running. I suspect the consequences are far far more severe for anyone with more weight than a typical elite endurance athlete.

I haven't had any significant injuries since I switched around 2011. It's not only helped my running but I'm pretty certain it's also helped improve my posture and my old back injury has been far less of an issue since that time than it was beforehand when i was in my early 30s. I do now use slightly cushioned shoes for most running, though I occasionally still use Merrell Trail gloves and Vapour Gloves. The cushioned shoes are still zero drop and highly flexible with no support. I've run half marathons and IM marathons in them without any issue. I should mention that prior to all of this I'd had gait analysis done and was told i was a major over-pronator and definitely needed to stick to stability shoes for running. It turns out the better solution was just learning to run properly instead of facilitating the problem.

Sorry, that got longer than intended.....

I've been running for 30+ years at 240 - 310 lbs without injury, running anywhere from zero to 200 miles per month, and have done a bunch of marathons and a few ultras up to 50 miles. Although it seems logical that being heavy would lead to injury, there's actually not much evidence of that. In fact, in some studies, overweight runners were less likely to get injured.

Injuries come from too much, too soon, or from the dumb luck of being injury prone due to your physiology or due to who knows what. I have done the vast majority of my runs off-road, but I've run on road plenty too, and I've never thought about running form or cadence or anything like that. I've worn just about every type of shoe there is and haven't noticed any difference in how my body responds.

I'm very good at avoiding overtraining (i.e., I'm lazy) and have had periods where I quit running for months, so maybe that's my secret. I've never stretched or done a core exercise or rolled anything or done a mobility exercise. I do lift weights, but must admit that I usually skip leg day. I have freakishly long legs and stiff hips (I got scolded in kindergarten because I couldn't sit cross-legged) and can't squat worth a darn (or it might be that I'm old, fat, and lazy, but I'm going with the legs and hips excuse). I can deadlift okay, but I've deadlifted maybe 3 out of those 30+ years.

Anyway, you may be heavy for a competitive triathlete, but you might be below average weight for hobby joggers. I wouldn't automatically attribute injury to your weight. Just take it easy, build up slowly, take the conventional advice for avoiding injury like in the previous posts, and don't worry.

If you want to run frequently, and start building up, but don't want to get injured, than 30 minutes isn't short, that's medium or even longish. And if the focus is on building frequency and time on your feet, don't worry about speed just yet, so better to run even more at easy pace.
If you want to avoid getting injured it's better to start with shorter and easier, than to start with times and paces which are too long and too fast. Those 6-8 weeks extra at the start shouldn't matter if you're in it for the long run.

This is prudent. Building to 6x60 easy running rather than the barryp structure should be fine, but be careful about how quickly you build and be very deliberate about adding intensity. Part of the benefit of barryp is to give very easy days (one of the 1s) after intense days. I’ve found many of my niggles or injuries emerge the day after speedwork rather than on the day of the workout - so if 6x60 easy goes well and you want to start adding intensity, consider dropping to 30’ very easy the day after speedwork.

As others have said, you’re not that heavy!

6', 185 here. Not a body builder, but info lift 3x per week on top of biking/running.

If you're going to do intensity training at all (which I probably wouldn't) do it every other week, instead of every week. Your body will thank you, and your results won't really suffer. Also really, really ease in to the intensity stuff

Do you really need a high cusion shoe? I run in pretty low cusioned shoes (adidas Boston's) and had more injury trouble with more cushioning.

Try to work in a day of core work and running specific strength training. To keep yourself injury free.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

I won’t reply to everyone individually as there are now a lot of replies, I just want to say thank you to everyone you have given me a
Lot to think about and it’s all very helpful.

I’ll give a sort of N+(1-1.5) to this...

At 220 and 6’5”, after a lot of calf strain injuries and seeming susceptibility to calf injury, I returned to running in Vivobarefoot shoes. I worked up to 18-20km runs in them and wore them for an IM70.3. They were brutal for my tired, sagging form.

After a few years of running in barefoot shoes, I visited the physio who took one look at my calves and exclaimed, “Your calves are huge. How’ve you done that?!” I was at the physio because I’d got in good shape and snuck in an additional speed workout in the build up to my A race.... which resulted in giving myself a bad calf strain.

I definitely see the merit in barefoot/minimalist shoe work, but there is also benefit to maintaining good posture when running, running tall, pushing your hips forward; also gradually ramping up the volume and keeping intensity low whilst doing so. Adding intensity once you’ve got a good base is probably good advice.

I would rotate a few days of minimalist shoe running (true minimalist shoes) into your training. I also had low arches and was always recommended stability shoes purely because of my size (no gait analysis). I spend as much time as possible barefoot.

Probably a blend of all the factors mentioned in this thread are good advice. Currently running 50-60 km a week on Nike Reacts.

p.s. Hardly Trying, your post cracked me up. Love the attitude!

Somewhere on this forum I learned the frequency-volume-intensity model and it has worked wonders for me.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but running more often with less volume and intensity is the way to go for bigger guys. I'm currently using this model and I've found great success so far.

Very simple - run 5-6 times a week at a comfortable pace. Not fast and not crazy slow either. Start out at 1 mile per day. After you finish week 1 (either 5 or 6 miles), week two you should add one mile to one of those days. Week three, add another mile to a different day, preferably on the other end of your training week. Keep adding one mile a week until you get to about 20 miles per week (let's say 5 days x 4 miles per day). Don't build up mileage unevenly (5 miles one day and 2 miles on another).

Remain at this volume for several weeks. Slowly introduce speed workouts in your mileage. No more than one speed workout per week. Or don't introduce speed work at all. Just depends on your race goals. If you encounter issues, back off and go back to your basic volume training. You've checked the frequency and volume boxes. The intensity box may take longer.

In my experience, my biggest injury issue being a big guy comes from the thinking that I should run less. I figure, well I need rest days to give my joints a break. So I run less, but I aim to hit a certain mileage, so I end up cramming a lot of miles into 3 runs a week. This is where overuse injuries thrive.

Give it a shot. I can give you my run schedule if you want to follow it.