Running is good for you, or so they say. But if you’re about to take it up, you might want to be careful: the statistics say that newbie runners suffer 17.8 injuries per thousand hours. To put that in perspective, training and playing professional rugby clocks up 33.6 injuries per thousand hours.

Before you email me: yes, it’s hard to compare different studies (when does an injury become severe enough to count?) And yes, I am overstating things slightly: experienced runners hurt themselves at less than half that rate.

Anyway, this week’s column looks into how joggers can enjoy the sport while preserving their joints. I don’t want to give everything away. But running is indeed a pretty injurious pastime, although most of the pain comes from over-use injuries caused by keen novices doing too much, too quickly.

When it comes to the knees specifically, regular running is, if anything, probably protective. It strengthens your leg muscles, which, other things being equal, will make your knees tougher. And a study of thousands of marathon runners found no association between the cumulative amount of pavement pounded and risk of arthritis. So no, running is not bad for your knees—as long as you leave your ego back at home and remember to start slowly.

How often do you run in a week? Let us know via our poll. And if you have any tips for avoiding running-related injuries you can email us at wellinformed@economist.com. We might feature you in next week’s newsletter.

Last week we asked how many steps readers aim to take each day—and more than 2,000 of you got back to us. The biggest proportion of you (over a third) said they tried to take 10,000 or more steps. Almost a quarter said their target was between 5,000-9,000. Roughly 14% of you either aim for fewer than 5,000 steps or don’t set yourself a target at all.

We also asked if you had any tips for increasing your steps, or how fast you take them. Writing from Mumbai, Ashish says walking is his main form of exercise since giving up running in his early 30s. He has “built walking into his lifestyle” by taking calls and recording voice notes on the move, as well as using a treadmill during board meetings.

Ken, who is 79, says he walks about 7,000 to 8,000 steps per day and regards the activity as an opportunity to think “in an unhurried and quiet environment”. In Belgium, Luc says he increased his walking cadence by striding to the rhythm of music (“Waterfront”, by Simple Minds). In London, Jonathan has three simple words of advice for those wanting to up their numbers: get a dog. See you next week.

Knee pain in joggers is prevalent enough to be a term of art. “Runner’s knee”, an ache around the kneecap, was among the most common complaints in a study of 3,669 runners published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine (OJSM) in 2021. But it is only one of an assortment of “overuse” injuries: those caused by training that, though tolerable in parts, cumulatively exceeds the body’s capacity to recover.