This sentiment is so predictable and boring. Also the article literally says the motivation was knee pain meant he couldn’t run more than a few minutes. Maybe people aren’t the cartoons you have in your head.
I suffered from knee pain from running, too. I was concerned I was going to cripple myself. I finally switched my technique from heel-strike to ball-strike. This dramatically reduced the impact load on my knees, and the pain faded away after a month or so and has not returned.
The reason this works is because your body is designed to ball-strike, the heel-strike is unnatural. The ball-strike enables the tendons in your feet to act as shock absorbers. Those tendons will hurt for a bit under the unaccustomed load, so it's best to back off the running a bit until they strengthen.
Be careful. I did the same and it worked fine until I started to run more than 15k at a time, when I started to develop issues with my metatarsals that still haven't gone away more than 6 months later. I saw a physio who specialises in running and he said that long-distance runners don't ball strike any more, it's more of a flat landing (so still not heel strike) and then you spring off from your ball. That stopped my feet really hurting after long runs, but as I say I'm still paying the price for pure ball striking.
