What's it like as a knee study participant?

We speak to some of the volunteers in our marathon study…

Our first knee study was based on the 2017 London Marathon and involved 116 volunteers — first-time marathon runners, most of them in their 40s, with no known running injuries and a balanced spread across the group in terms of gender, age and physique.

The pre-event medicals took place in November 2016, before participants started their training. The London Marathon was on 23 April and the immediate post-event medicals were completed early in May 2017. You can read all about the findings, but what was it actually like to be involved in the study? We asked three participants to talk us through the experience.

“It certainly gives you pause for thought about what you are going to be asking your body to do and then what you think your body is like now. And it has certainly given me good reasons about my diet, my general way of life… I would encourage everybody to go for it”

“The knees seem ok… I have played a bit of football for some years but they still look ok… Definitely going to keep an eye on the trainers, because I know they are going to be quite important.”

“It’s not going to be easy, but I have done it so far, so I will have to sacrifice other things”