Low running offers a way to make distance running a viable physical activity option for more people

Distance running is a popular and accessible leisure-time physical activity with distinct health benefits. Recent large scale epidemiological studies have shown that the health benefits emerge even when distance running is practiced regularly at rather low doses: a minimum of 50min per week even at slow speeds of 9 km/h may suffice. Unfortunately, running comes with a high risk of developing Running-Related Injuries. RRI’s can be recurrent, costly and can be a reason to stop running and even curtail other types of physical activity. RRI’s emerge due to an imbalance between the running specific loading and the Musculo-Skeletal Loading capacity in combination with the body’s remodelling capacities. One of the best documented RRI risk factors is ‘too fast’: i.e. running at higher speeds and/or progressing too fast in speed and/or in distance. Moreover, a recent study by Malisoux et al. (2022) showed that a smaller duty factor (DF1⁄4 ratio of contact time to stride time) is a general risk factor for RRI in recreational runners. Many biomechanical running studies have focussed on running at speeds around 12 km/h. However, many recreational runners run at much slower speeds. In his 2017s lecture ‘Running Biomechanics: What did we miss?’, Martyn Shorten (Shorten & Pisciotta, 2017) reported an average speed below 10 km/h from a large-scale survey of runners. Additionally, he observed in a marathon a substantial proportion of slow runners who ran without a clear flight phase. A high DF above 50% was obvious and described as ‘grounded running’.