1 WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WAY YOU RUN?
• • • “Do you hear that?” asks Pasquale Manocchia, his face contorting into an ugly wince. It’s as if he’s just heard fingernails screeching across a chalkboard.
We’re seated in his office high above a 13 000 square metre gym called La Palestra (what the ancient Greeks and Romans called gymnasiums); where my attention strays between the pair of Chinese brass knuckles with spikes sitting on his desk, and other rare fitness artefacts scattered across the glass-encased room. Some of which include old wooden dumbbells, some fencing gear, Indian clubs and a pair of ancient hiking boots. The gym is located in an old ballroom of the former Hotel des Artistes on Manhattan’s Upper West Side; and the office has views of the people working out below us between Roman columns. I give Manocchia a blank stare. All I hear is music and the faint thump thump thump of someone running, out of sight, on a treadmill. “No one should ever be striking the ground that hard”, says Manocchia, shaking his head. “There’s no question that more people are running than ever before, and more people are getting injured than ever before.”. While that may strike you as a touch dramatic, it’s actually not. In fact, each year, up to 80% of America’s 53 million runners get injured. That’s more than 42 million injured runners last year, which is an even more staggering number when you consider that the figure doesn’t include athletes who get hurt from running while playing other sports. And by injuries, we’re talking about
