Login | April 29, 2024
Running surfaces
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: April 15, 2024
Through the years there’s been an ongoing debate within the running community concerning running surfaces.
Some believe that hard surface running is injurious to the legs while others dispute that claim.
And despite the cacophony of assertions put forth by both sides of this issue, the jury’s still out.
This is because there’s some really good peer-reviewed research out there that’s produced some very persuading evidence to support both sides of the argument.
And to give you a quick glimpse of the pros and cons, here are just a few of the many contradictory studies concerning the hard surface running controversy.
Let’s begin with a couple of studies that have found no correlation between hard running surfaces and leg injuries.
In the August 1999 issue of the Journal of Biomechanics, the article, “Runners adjust leg stiffness for their first step on a new running surface,” concluded that runners automatically adjust leg stiffness such that they’re unaffected by changes in surface rigidity.
There’s also a study in the December 2010 issue of The British Journal of Sports Medicine, “Running training on different surfaces have different effects on performance,” where the researchers also concluded that running surface really didn’t seem to play a significant role in running-related injuries.
And conversely here’s a couple of research studies whose results are contrary to the aforementioned.
There’s the August 2012 research paper published in the Journal of Sports Science, titled, “Attenuation of foot pressure during running on four different surfaces: asphalt, concrete, rubber, and natural grass,” in which the authors concluded, “if a runner controls the amount and intensity of practice, running on grass may reduce the total stress on the musculoskeletal system compared with the total musculoskeletal stress when running on more rigid surfaces such as asphalt and concrete.”
And there’s a June 2017 study published in Sports Biomechanics, “The effect of three surface conditions, speed and running experience on vertical acceleration of the tibia during running,” in which researchers had the participants running on three different surfaces (concrete, synthetic running track and a wood-chip trail) at two different running speeds. In this study the authors concluded that running on a woodchip trail at a slower pace could reduce the injury risk of tibia injuries.
So despite some pretty good research that seemingly corroborates both assertions, there’s been no clear cut winner thus far.
And now to further complicate this issue, within the last couple of years sport scientists have been turning this argument on its head, postulating that hard surface running is less injurious than soft surface running.
Yup, researchers are beginning to take another look into biomechanical end of this debate - just as researchers had back in that August 1999 issue of the Journal of Biomechanics where the author’s hypothesized that runners subconsciously increased/decreased leg stiffness based on the rigidity of the running surface.
Building upon that August 1999 leg stiffness hypothesis is a contemporary research study, “Effect of Grade and Surface Type on Peak Tibial Acceleration in Trained Distance Runners,” that was published in the February 2021 issue of the Journal of Applied Biomechanics.
And the researchers of this study concluded that, “under certain grade conditions grass may result in higher TA [peak vertical tibial acceleration] compared with either concrete or asphalt.” And higher peak tibial accelerations have been found to be associated with tibial stress fractures.
So this is where we stand today with plenty of research yet with no conclusive and duplicatable evidence to support either side of this debate.
And what’s really maddening here is that all of the aforementioned suppositions appear to be well grounded.
Thus, you’re still going to have to sort out the numerous pros and cons associated with various types of running surfaces.
Now let me conclude by adding my two cents.
If you’re a recreational runner consider running on a mix of running surfaces. If you’re a road or trail racer consider running on the surfaces that parallel your racing surfaces. And finally, if you’ve had a history of running-related injuries and have been doing all your running on one particular type of running surface, then you might want to consider changing the type of surface you’re running on.
That’s about all I can suss out of this enduring debate.