Citation badly needed for “running on pavement is risky”
This is my second post in as many days about screwing up.
This entire old article of mine, Is Running on Pavement Risky?, is based on a common-sensical, “obvious” premise with a really glaring citation-needed problem. Is there any direct scientific evidence that running on hard surfaces is actually a problem? Has anyone ever gotten big groups of people to run for a long time on different surfaces, measuring injury rates in both groups? Noooooo! Amazingly, it’s a completely untested idea, as others have already explained. It’s a serious weakness in the article, because “what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” (Hitchen’s Razor). So I will be revising the article ASAP.
Meanwhile, it’s not like it’s crazy to think that hard surface running might be risky. It’s a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and there is some indirect evidence both supporting and undermining it. So, while this warning remains in place, please treat the rest of the article like it’s the case against hard surface running. I’ll be updating it to reflect both sides of that controversy.