Running Advice

Before getting started, it is very important to understand how your body responds to workouts and what causes improvements in fitness and endurance. It is not during the work session that your body improves, it is during the rest. No rest, no improvement. The body responds to physical stress by adapting in three main areas -- the heart and lungs become more efficient, the muscles become stronger and the bones and tendons increase density. If you increase your activity too much, your body will breakdown. If you are starting properly, you will avoid soreness and injury.
There are three main factors in a training program: Duration, Intensity, and Frequency (DIF). It is very important that as you try to make improvements, you don’t increase these factors by more than ten percent per week. Most people go from sedentary, or low levels, to high levels of all three and end up injured within three weeks. It can take 6-8 weeks to recover.
It is important when starting out to keep your intensity and duration low and get your frequency up to 5 days a week. After you get your frequency up, you can then increase your duration to get ready for a 10K. A good rule to note is that in a one-time effort, you can do three times the distance of your average run/walk. It is nice to know you don’t have to rush your training to be prepared. Keep the Intensity low until you are used to the frequency and duration of your program.
Your training program should have a full range of workouts to maximize your potential and avoid injury and boredom. The different types of workouts are long intervals, short intervals, resistance work (hills), steady states, over-distance and the un-workout, rest. Planning the rotation and intensity of these workouts is the secret to becoming a runner or walker.
A good program will focus on the goals of each of the groups. It is very important to understand how the body responds to exercise and how much is too much. Listen to your body first, the workout program second.