Frazz by Jef Mallett for December 18, 2012

“Man is the Ape that runs.”

Don’t quite remember where I saw this back in the heyday of Jim Fix and all that “Running” stuff, but it stuck with me because if you’ve ever seen apes, monkeys, and the rest “scamper” and compared it with Human “running,” the difference really IS amazing.

Somewhere along the line we learned a thing or two from Wolves and Horses and developed a gait that is both efficient and appealing.

I LOVE watching Lady Joggers.

Jus’ sayin’.

many of us “run” by pressing x on the gamepad.

They run even if no one is chasing them? That’s crazy….

then there was Jim Fixx

I have always wondered how someone would could run outside, in rainy and cold weather, among traffic with distracted and angry drivers, breathing vehicle exhaust, purposely straining their bodies and suffering repetitive motion injury, and then say they are doing it for health reasons...HA!

God gave you two feet. One for the gas pedal and the other for the clutch.

As somebody (see http://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/robert-m-hutchins/ for a list of candidates) said, “Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes away.”

spoken like a true couch potato

Some people get addicted to running too. I think it’s weird. But to each his own.

I hate running so much, I was almost grateful for a knee injury that prevented me ever attempting it again. I do love cycling, though.

@LeoAutodidact – it seems it is the thing that man does better than most other animals. Long distance endurance run coupled with the ability to sweat means we don’t overheat. Human hunters still run their prey to exhaustion in certain countries.

Anecdotal evidence is usually worthless. For all of you who think running will slowly kill you, starting with your knees -

Stanford researcher James Fries followed more than 500 runners for 21 years. Among the findings are the facts that runners had fewer disabilities than non-runners, a longer span of activity in their lives and are half as likely to die early deaths.

He says the biggest surprise was that the predicted joint damage, in which many researchers had expected to see, wasn’t there. Instead, they found that barring injury, running kept important components of the knee, such as the cartilage, healthy.

And the dire injury predictions other scientists made for runners have fallen completely flat. Fries and his colleagues published a companion paper in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showing running was not associated with greater rates of osteoarthritis in their elderly runners. Runners also do not require more total knee replacements than nonrunners, Fries said.

Maybe Phil isn’t such an idiot after all.

Differences between humans and other animals: “Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.” Samuel Butler "Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to." -Mark Twain