Beginner’s Schedule

A word about the following schedule: I don’t know what your usual week is like, so it would be silly for me to say that you have to start your workout week on Sunday, then go again on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. When you go is going to depend on when the workout meshes best with the rest of your life. So in the schedule, I’ve marked workouts as the first one of the week rather than noting on which days to do them. What’s important is following the progression and planning your workouts so that you have that crucial recovery time between workouts. In other words, try not to do the four workouts for a week on four consecutive days.

And now, at last, a schedule of how to progress from 0 to 30 minutes of running in a month. Remember, before starting workout 1 of week 1, you should already be able to walk for 30 minutes, four times a week. If you can’t do a given workout, don’t worry. Stay with that one until you can and move on to the next one only after you’ve mastered the prior one.

Gain Through Pain

You’re sore when you start working out regularly because you’ve done microscopic damage to your muscles, and they’re irritated. But give them the chance to recover from that short-term damage, and they’ll rebuild themselves to be a little bit stronger and better able to work at the level that they think you’re going to ask them to again. The same goes for other body parts, such as your heart and lungs. When you make another little progression in effort, the same thing happens again. This process is never too great a stress, but a stress nonetheless. After a few rounds of this, your body catches on that this is going to become a regular process. The result is that it fortifies itself, and you become fitter.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention during this extended narrative, you’ll have noted a crucial fact: The important gains in fitness come not while you’re running, but after you run. That’s an example of the stress/recovery principle. To put this principle into practice, you stress your body, which tears it down a little. Then you give your body a chance to recover, and while recovering, you body rebuilds itself to be just a little more capable of handling the next bout of similar stress.

In other words, providing adequate recovery is the key to progressing. That’s why you can’t hurry your way from being sedentary to fit. You have to allow your body time between workouts to become stronger. If you don’t allow time, you’re going to plateau. That’s why I think you should start with four days a week—you’re going often enough to make progress, but not so much that you can’t recover between workouts.

But don’t some runners run every day? What about their need for recovery time? One of the benefits of becoming fit is that your recovery time between workouts shortens dramatically. Most top runners train twice a day. Their bodies have become so accustomed to the stress/recovery process that they can do two runs within the space of eight hours and feel fine on both. But even they’re not immune to the same principles that beginners are. When they do more than they’re used to and don’t allow enough time between hard efforts, they get sore and tired, just like you.

When to Run, When to Rest

What’s a good routine to get into? I recommend that beginners shoot for half an hour, four days a week. Mind you, I don’t mean half an hour of running four times a week right off the bat. In the schedule at the end of this section, I’ll show you how to gradually build to being able to run 30 minutes at a time.

What I’m assuming in this chart is that at the start of the first week, you can handle walking at a brisk pace for half an hour at a time, four times a week. If you can’t, then don’t start the running portions of the schedule yet. Keep walking until you have that basic level of fitness that will allow you to walk for half an hour, four times a week.

If you’ve been doing a little running already, it’s OK to jump into the chart at the level you’re at. For example, if you know that you can run a mile, then it’s OK to enter the schedule at the point where I have you running for 10 minutes straight at a stretch. But if you’re going to do that, you have to promise to be honest with yourself. There’s a big difference between knowing that you can run a mile because you did it once a few weeks ago and doing so four times in a week.

If you don’t run regularly, be conservative and enter the schedule at about half the level that you know you can handle in one run. So if you know that you can run a mile but haven’t been doing so a few times a week, start where the schedule has you running for five minutes at a time.
The reason behind this advice is an important principle that applies to all runners, from the most out-of shape beginner to the fastest runners in the world. It’s the progression principle. What it says is that the way to improve your fitness is gradually, in small, consistent steps, rather than in great leaps.
Consistency is the single most important factor in determining whether you’ll improve as a runner.

Becoming a runner is like saving for retirement. The best way is to start small, but be consistent, and then build on your earlier progress. As you accumulate money for retirement or improve your fitness level, you can see the progress that you’re making and will be motivated to keep at it. No one day is a great transformative event, where you suddenly have a lot more money or can suddenly run three times farther than usual. You chip away at it, and what once seemed impossible—setting aside $10,000, or running for 15 minutes without stopping—becomes just another signpost on the way to your next goal. In retirement savings, progress happens because of interest. In running, progress happens because of how your body works. You give it this new task of running just a bit.

Your body is a little shocked and thinks, “Hmm, I haven’t really experienced that before. This crazy person just might ask me to do that again. I had better be ready.” So it prepares itself in order to be just a little more capable of handling what you did to it recently.

Walk, Don’t Run

This advice might sound strange, but the best way to start a running program for a lot of people is to walk. That’s especially the case if you haven’t been active for the last few years or are overweight. I know, you bought a book on running. You want to run! But when it comes to starting a regular running routine, slow and steady is always going to win the race.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you: When you’re new to running, especially if you’ve been sedentary, running is going to hurt for awhile. Later I’ll explain how it should and shouldn’t hurt, but I wanted to get that out on the table from the get-go. You’re asking your body to do something that it’s not accustomed to. Initially, your body is going to protest. You’re going to be a little sore and, at first, a little more tired. Your body is going to protest really loudly if you overload it too much right off the bat. If you try to do too much too soon, the soreness and fatigue are going to be so great that you’re going to have stop for several days at a time. When you start again, you’ll be starting from scratch. Then you might feel as if you’re behind schedule and might overdo it that much more. Bad idea!

A better idea is acknowledging that you’re going to be sore and a little fatigued at first and doing what you can to minimize those inevitabilities. For a lot of people, that’s going to mean walking at first, then gradually introducing some bouts of easy running, and then gradually increasing the length of those bouts.

The biggest battle that all runners face is sticking with it. Even long-time runners can find it tough to find a routine that works for them. What’s most important at first is getting in the habit of exercising regularly. Erring on the side of caution when you start is going to help you to feel good enough to stick with it. As you become fitter, you’ll already have your exercise routine down and can progress toward more running. So get out the door and start walking. When doing so is comfortable for you, report back, and I’ll get going on making you a runner.

From 0 to 30 Minutes in a Month

There’s no universally applicable program for starting a running program. As I stress again and again in this book, regardless of whether I’m talking about how to build endurance or why to run or even what shoes to wear, running is an individual sport. As the old saying goes, every runner is an experiment of one.

What works for one runner might be a disaster for another. All runners are going to progress at different rates. Still, there are a few basic guidelines that all runners should follow. In telling you how to get going, I’ll give these guidelines to you. You might find what I recommend either too easy or too hard. If either of these conditions is the case, that’s fine. The guiding principle in your running should always be to stay in tune with what you feel comfortable with.

Doctor’s Orders?

I’m not a doctor; I don’t even play one on TV. So I’m not going to claim to be qualified to dole out medical advice. Unfortunately, when it comes to running, a lot of doctors aren’t experts, either. It’s become almost reflexive to say that anyone thinking about starting a running program should get medical clearance first. Well, I’m going to be a bit different and not take cover under that blanket statement.

Why? A few reasons, none of which are meant to put down the medical profession. But consider this statistic: Even after the last 25 years of the fitness boom, less than 30 percent of doctors advise their patients about exercise and nutrition. Doctors are trained to fight disease, not prescribe health. I’ve had more than one doctor ask me if I’m amazed that my knees haven’t given out yet.

There’s a kind of philosophical basis to my argument. To me, it seems that saying that everyone has to get medical clearance before starting to run implies that running is some dangerous activity, not one of the best things you can do to take control of your health. You’re preparing to go outside and use your body as it’s meant to be used, not preparing to be sent to battle.

Why do so many people say that you should run only with a note from your doctor? In part, the reason is because running is portrayed so inaccurately in the general media. Every year, about 30,000 people run the New York City Marathon. Every few years, one of those runners has a heart attack during the race. Sadly, sometimes the runner dies. This tragedy is what gets play in the papers.

But did you know that at the University of Michigan’s home football games, the medical teams expect to treat two heart attack patients per game from the stands? That’s what the law of averages would tell you is going to happen when you have 100,000 people together in one place. Do you then see the media warning about the risks of watching football games?

If I sound a little sensitive here, it’s partly because of the attention the media gave when Jim Fixx died of a heart attack while running in 1984. Because Fixx was the author of the best-selling The Complete Book of Running, he was a spokesperson for the sport. I know a lot of people who subsequently quit running, because they figured that if running killed Jim Fixx, who wasn’t at risk?

I knew Jim Fixx. What was not reported was that heart disease ran in his family and that even with dying at age 52, Fixx had already outlived his father by nine years. More important—and here I might win back some of the doctors I’ve just angered—is that Fixx thought that his marathon running made him immune and so ignored his medical history. He had been a heavy smoker before he started running, and his cholesterol levels were way above normal. He also ignored chest pains that he sometimes got while running, as well as pleas from Kenneth Cooper, M.D.,(sometimes called the father of aerobics) to get regular check-ups.

Am I contradicting myself here? Not at all. Everyone should know their medical history, as well as that of their family. I’m assuming that you get regular physicals, know your blood pressure and cholesterol level, and so on. If you don’t, and if starting a running program inspires you to see a doctor, then by all means go. I just worry sometimes that getting a doctor’s “permission” to run keeps a lot of people from ever starting. So besides those who don’t know their basic health information, who should see a doctor before starting a running program? The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has issued the following guidelines, and they seem reasonable to me. If one of these statements applies to you, discuss your desire to start a running program with a doctor, preferably one who is used to treating active patients.

• You’re over the age of 60 and aren’t used to regular exercise.
• You have family members who have had coronary artery disease before the age of 55.
• You frequently have pain or feel pressure in the left or mid chest area, the left side of your neck, the left shoulder, or left arm during or immediately after exercise.
• You often feel faint, dizzy, or unaccountably out of breath after mild exertion.
• You have high blood pressure that isn’t under control.
• You’ve had heart trouble, a heart murmur, or a heart attack.
• You have arthritis.
• You have a medical condition that might need special attention once you start exercising, such as diabetes.

If none of these statements applies to you, you can proceed to learning how to get going.

Adding Life to Your Years

If you’ve been paying attention during this chapter, you’ve probably already concluded what I’m about to say: One of the greatest health benefits of running is how all of the many wonderful things it does for your body and mind work together. You feel more at home in your body, you don’t get as tired doing normal activities, you feel better about yourself, you’re more regularly in a better mood—these aren’t the kinds of things that can necessarily be quantified in medical terms, but I defy anyone to tell me that they don’t go a long way toward improving your health.

Some people refer to this snowball effect of running’s benefits as putting more life in your years. When you’re a runner, you’re more able to use your body as you want to, which makes you feel more alive. Life might not be any easier, but living it sure is. Any longtime runner will tell you that his or her quality of life is significantly higher since becoming a runner. That’s what vitality is all about.

So running adds life to your years. But does running add years to your life? The answer is yes. As a Surgeon General’s report in 1996 put it, “higher levels of regular physical activity are associated with lower mortality rates for both older and younger adults.” In other words, when you compare runners and other exercisers to sedentary people, the active ones are more likely to outlive the couch potatoes.

Remember that study of Harvard grads that I mentioned when talking about heart disease? In that section, I explained that burning at least 2,000 calories a week in vigorous activity, which is the rough equivalent of running 20 miles a week, significantly lowers your risk for having heart disease. The same study found that the 20 miles per week threshold also coincides with longer lives. Participants in the study who maintained that level of activity from age 35 onward outlived the less active subjects by two and a half years.

And it’s never too late: Even those who waited until after the age of 50 to start that seemingly magic 2,000 calories a week level of exercise gained an extra one to two years. Put all of these benefits together, and you not only have extra years of life, but you also feel great during more years of that life. Can you believe that some people don’t run?

The Head Games

You’ve probably heard about “the runner’s high.” The definitions are never all that precise, but it’s supposed to be some sort of transcendent state that you enter into after running for half an hour or so. Many beginning runners have been told about the runner’s high and figure that they must be doing things wrong, because they’ve certainly never felt like Timothy Leary on a run.

I’m here to tell you that the runner’s high is an overblown concept. There’s no such thing as a quantifiable, yes-or-no transcendent state that X amount of running induces, any more than listening to 3.4 of your favorite songs causes a definitive change in your mental condition. So don’t belittle or doubt yourself because you’re not achieving the runner’s high—in one sense, there’s no such thing to achieve. But like music, running does have a dramatic effect on your mood.

Let me be the first to tell you that if you don’t finish most of your runs feeling calmer, more content, relaxed, and less tense and angst-ridden, then you’re doing something wrong. If you want to call that a runner’s high, I’m not going to argue. Short-term stress relief is one of the main things that gets busy runners out the door. Studies have found that people score much lower on tests of anxiety immediately after finishing a run, compared to how they scored before their run. As one knowledgeable running doctor has noted, even as little as 15 minutes of moderate walking reduces muscular tension more than a standard dose of a tranquilizer.

Over the long haul, those psychological benefits accrue. Indeed, aerobic exercise, such as running, is a common prescription for mild depression. Less dramatically, but just as important, runners consistently rate higher than average on these important personality characteristics:

➤ Emotional stability
➤ Optimism
➤ Self-sufficiency
➤ Self-esteem

Compared to sedentary people, runners have also been found to have an increased ability to concentrate and above average organizational and problem solving skills. They also report feeling content and mentally vigorous more often than do nonexercisers. In other words, running clears your brain along with your arteries. Why does running put you in a better mood? The answer is endorphins. These chemicals, which act like morphine, are released by your brain when you’re under stress.

Studies have found that the level of endorphins circulating in your system can be more than twice as high after a run compared to when you’re at rest. In the long term, there’s less of a chemical explanation for why running is so good for you psychologically. Nonetheless, the reasons seem pretty clear to me. For starters, as you become more fit, you’re going to have a better self-image. You’ll feel better about how you look and about your health. By being less absorbed with self-loathing, you can turn your attention toward having a brighter outlook toward the world.

In addition, setting and achieving goals on a regular basis is tremendously satisfying. After almost every run, you’ll have a feeling of accomplishment—you overcame inertia, got out the door, and did something good for yourself. Being able to remind yourself that you wanted to work out four times last week and did so can bring a boost when events seem to be directing you, rather than you directing them.

Breathe Easily with Running

A key component of increased aerobic capacity is better lung function. Just as your heart becomes stronger with regular running, so do your lungs. They’re able to sustain a higher work load for a longer period of time. As your lungs become more efficient, you can take in more oxygen with each breath. That’s one of the reasons why you don’t breathe as hard climbing stairs when you’re fit—your lungs are better able to get oxygen to working muscles.

In terms of medical conditions, this better lung function means that people who have asthma not only can run, but should do some form of regular exercise. After all, when you improve your body’s capacity to take in and use oxygen, then what it considers stressful occurs at a much higher level of exertion. So an activity that previously might have triggered an asthma attack doesn’t as you become fitter. Also, because your breathing becomes smoother as you get fit, there’s less chance that your airways will become irritated.

The other big breathing-related benefit of running is one that I’ve mentioned before: It can help you to stop smoking. Remember what I said about how most people know that regular runners don’t have as many weight problems as sedentary people? Well, the same is true with respect to running and smoking. You just don’t see the two mix after awhile. I know from my experience that when I started running again, smoking became increasingly less attractive.

Yes, I still smoked when I started running again in the early ’70s. Nicotine is addictive, after all. But I knew that if I stuck with the running, my body would eventually get so fed up with me continuing to poison it that I would eventually be able to kick my habit. Take my word on it: As your system becomes cleaner and more efficient, it becomes more sensitive to things that damage it. Few things are more damaging to it than cigarettes.

Get Better Bones with Running

Studies show a direct link between regular weight-bearing exercise, such as running, and bone thickness. The stronger a bone, the more stress it can handle before it breaks. This health benefit is especially important for women runners. Everyone starts losing bone mineral density after the age of 30. When women are past menopause, their estrogen levels drop, and their bones lose even more density. But running, along with a diet rich in calcium, can halt this loss. The upshot is that runners are less likely to suffer from osteoporosis, a disease in which bones become brittle and break easily.

Handling Heart Disease by Running

The American Heart Association (AHA) lists four major risk factors for developing coronary artery disease: smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol levels, and lack of regular exercise. In other words, even if you don’t smoke and have acceptable blood pressure and cholesterol levels, you’re still at an increased risk for heart disease if you’re sedentary.

The reason why running and other aerobic exercise dramatically reduce your risk for heart disease isn’t difficult to discern. As your aerobic capacity increases, your heart becomes more efficient and powerful. By stressing it for a short time at least a few times a week, you lessen the stress on it all the rest of the time. Running also works to lower your other risk factors. Running helps to prevent or delay the development of high blood pressure, and it helps to control it in people who have a genetic predisposition to the condition.

Running also helps to lower your overall blood cholesterol level, and running is one of the greatest ways to quit smoking. In other words, if you start running, you not only remove one of the major risks for developing heart disease (being sedentary), but you also go a long way toward eliminating the others.

To top it all off, running can also help with what the AHA identifies as contributing factors toward heart disease, including obesity, stress, and diabetes. No wonder that one famous study of Harvard alumni, led by Ralph Paffenbarger, Ph.D., found that those who burned at least 2,000 calories a week in vigorous exercise (about 20 miles a week) were 64 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack than their sedentary contemporaries.

Run away from diseases

Many runners are perfectly content with their weight, but keep running for other health reasons. When you run regularly, your aerobic capacity increases. The exercise scientists refer to this capacity as maximal oxygen uptake, or VO2 max. Whatever you call it, it refers to your body’s plumbing for aerobic exercise. Runners with a high VO2 max have a plumbing system that allows them to pump large amounts of oxygen-rich blood to working muscles.

With training, you can maximize the size of your pump and the quantity of blood that it transports. With six months to a year of training, previously sedentary people can expect to increase their aerobic capacity by 20 percent to 30 percent. That’s a large part of why you’re able to run substantially farther and faster after a few months of regular running than before you started. For racers, working to improve their VO2 max is one of the most important parts of their training. For our purposes here, though, what’s significant is that as your aerobic capacity increases, your risk for some of the most common debilitating diseases of modern society decreases.

You better focusing on body composition

How do you know if you need to lose weight? This question is tricky, with everyone’s situation being different. But ask yourself this: Were you a healthy, active person in your early 20s? If so, what did you weigh then? Do you weigh more now? You shouldn’t. By your early 20s, you’re pretty much done growing (at least vertically!). Unless you’ve spent most days in the gym since then lifting weights, it’s probably not an extra 20 pounds of muscle you’ve gained.

Overall, it’s better to focus on your body composition than exclusively on your weight. Your body composition is what percentage of your weight is lean body mass (muscles, bones, and everything else that isn’t fat) and what percentage is fat (both the fat stored in and around organs of your body and what you can see or feel beneath your skin). Concentrating on body composition recognizes that you can be very fit, but still be “overweight” by common standards. Measurements of body composition get people to realize that you can be at what the weight charts would tell you is a “desirable” weight, but still not be fit, or even healthy.

Think about how many people keep smoking because they don’t want to gain 10 pounds. You can starve yourself and be at a “desirable” weight, but be doing major damage to your body. It’s how your body is constructed, not just how many pounds it weighs, that’s important.
A good way to determine whether you have a decent body composition is by calculating your body mass index. This involves some math, so get out the calculator and follow these steps:

1. Determine your weight in kilograms by multiplying your weight in pounds by 0.454.
2. Determine your height in meters by multiplying your height in inches by 0.0254.
3. Square your height in meters (multiply it by itself).
4. Divide your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters. The result is your body mass index. For example, if you are 5’10” and weigh 150 pounds, you would multiply 150 by 0.454, for a weight in kilograms of 68.1. Your height in inches is 70; multiply that by 0.0254 for a height in meters of 1.778. Square that number to get 3.16. Finally, divide 68.1 (weight in kilograms) by 3.16 (square of height in meters) to get a body mass index of 21.5. Desirable body mass index ranges are 19 to 25 for both men and women. If your index is above 25, you probably are carrying too much fat.

Of course, you may not need to do this test. For many people, a look in the mirror while naked does the trick. Is the waist in your jeans a few inches more than when you were in your early 20s? Has your shirt or dress size increased? As I said, unless you’ve been training with Arnold Schwarzenegger, your clothes probably fit differently because of gaining fat, not muscle. Running can help you to lose the extra fat.

Just Run

You may have heard about special “fat-burning” workouts that draw exclusively from your fat stores and speed your weight loss. Runners are often told that running at a lower intensity will burn more fat than running faster. That’s true, but incomplete and misleading. Here’s the deal: When you’re sitting in a chair, you’re burning almost nothing but fat.

As your activity level increases, your muscles start to burn glycogen, which is how your body stores most of the carbohydrates that you eat. Glycogen is your muscles’ preferred fuel source for exercise. The harder you work out toward a maximal effort, the percentage of the calories burned from glycogen increases, and the percentage that comes from fat decreases. When you’re sprinting all out, you’re burning no fat at all.

Based on that information, some people will say to work out at a very easy pace to burn more fat. Technically, that’s true. But as the previous example shows, if you want to do nothing but burn fat, sit down. You’ll be burning almost nothing else!
What matters is not where the calories come from that you burn, but how many you burn. As I said, whether you walk or run, you burn about 100 calories per mile. So if you walk three miles, you’ll burn 300 calories, and more of those calories will come from your fat stores than if you run three miles. But think about the time involved.

Walking three miles is going to take close to an hour for most people. In the same amount of time, you could probably run twice as far. The result? You’ll have burned twice as many calories, and that’s what matters in taking and keeping the pounds off.
That’s why running is so great for losing weight. In just half an hour, you can burn as many calories as you would doing many other exercises for an hour or more. Running’s convenience and the short time each day that you need to allot for it mean that it’s easy to do regularly, meaning that you’re more likely to burn more calories more often.

The Math of Losing Weight

So how do you lose weight by running? A pound of body fat contains 3,500 calories.
Covering a mile on foot, either by walking or running, burns approximately 100 calories. The exact number depends on your weight, the terrain you cover, your fitness, and other factors, but the difference is small enough that 100 calories per mile is an applicable figure for all people. At the most basic level, you lose one pound of body fat for every 35 miles you run.

I know what you’re thinking: That’s a lot of running just to lose one pound! Isn’t there anything you can do to speed the process? Yes, there is. Let’s look at the math more carefully. OK, so you burn 100 calories per mile. Say you’re running 10 miles per week. You’re creating a calorie deficit of 1,000 calories per week, so it will take you about three and a half weeks to burn a pound of body fat through running alone.
But what if you make a few changes in your diet at the same time? What if you cut out that sugar-laden soda?
There’s 150 calories right there. What if you eat a banana instead of a chocolate chip cookie at lunch?

There’s another couple of hundred calories saved. Yes, you’ve probably tried dieting before, and it didn’t work for you. That’s not what I recommending here. Diets alone don’t work. Continually denying yourself is too hard, and it’s also not a healthy way to live. But combine a few small changes a day in your diet with exercise, and things are different. Suppose you combine running 10 miles a week with making good “food trades” that save you 300 calories a day. Suddenly, you’re at a calorie deficit of more than 3,000 per week, or nearly enough to lose one pound a week. That’s a safe level of weight loss. If you lose four to five pounds per month, it starts adding up.

Making running, not dieting, the main focus of your weight-loss program works in part because you’re doing something positive (running) to shed the pounds rather than not doing something fun (eating). If you follow my advice in this book, then you’ll come to enjoy your running, and the lost weight will be just one of the many things that you value it for.

In addition, exercise, not diet, is the way to go because after you work out, your metabolism remains elevated for hours. One study found that after an easy hour run, subjects were still burning calories at an accelerated rate more than seven hours later! Even after a 30-minute run, their metabolism was revved up for two hours after finishing. So by running, you’re burning extra calories even when you’re at rest. That doesn’t happen with dieting. In fact, the opposite does. Also, every bit of muscle that you gain with your running helps you to lose weight. Muscles burn more calories at rest than fat does.

Weight for It

Running to lose weight is one of the single most popular reasons that people take up the sport, for good reason. Look around the next time you find yourself at a road race. See many overweight people finishing the race? That’s not meant to imply that only runners who finish races lose weight. I just wanted to reinforce what most people know intuitively—regular runners are less likely to have problems with their weight than most people. That fact is important to remember if losing weight is one of your main motivations to start running. Why? Because although weight loss through running can be dramatic, it takes time.

Nearly all of our society is based on quick results and instant gratification. Need cash? There’s an ATM around the corner. Article in the morning paper bother you? Fire off an e-mail to the editor. Dying to know the temperature in Outer Mongolia? Just turn on The Weather Channel. I’m all in favor of convenience. Unfortunately, though, the notion that everything can and should happen quickly has crept into areas of our lives where that’s just not how things happen. Those areas include weight loss. Although seemingly half the magazines in the world carry the line, “Lose 10 pounds before breakfast!” on their covers, that’s just not how it works. If losing weight were that easy, then more than half of Americans wouldn’t be overweight. Taking off your extra flab takes time and patience. After all, you didn’t gain your spare tire overnight, so you shouldn’t expect to lose it overnight.

Depressed yet? Don’t be. As I said, most people know that regular runners are less likely to be overweight. I’ll spend pretty much the rest of this book showing you various ways to become and remain a regular runner. Do that and some (if not all) of the extra weight that you may be carrying around will disappear.

Lose the Fat

Everyone knows that it’s bad to be overweight. Obese people (people who weigh at least 20 percent more than their ideal weight) are three times as likely as people of normal weight to develop high blood pressure and five times as likely to develop diabetes. Some doctors claim that obesity causes more than 300,000 early deaths a year in the United States. Look around the next time you’re at a mall or an airport, where you can see a good cross-section of Americans, and you’ll see that this problem is getting worse, not better, despite the fitness boom of the last 20 years. Nearly 60 million Americans are obese—almost one in four!

You don’t have to be obese to have a reason to shed some pounds, however. By some measures, more than half of all Americans carry too much weight. Even though these people are not obese, they’re still placing additional stress on their hearts, bones, and joints. Maybe you have an extra 10 pounds that seems to have tacked itself on to your middle sometime in the last few years. What you want to know is whether running can help you to trim down. The short answer is: Of course it can.

(Myth #3) “Women are too fragile to run.”

Supposedly well-meaning men have been throwing this myth around for centuries. It’s usually just an excuse to perpetuate sexism. For example, when the Olympics were restarted in 1896, the International Olympic Committee wrote “that the Olympic Games must be reserved for the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism.” Although women were fighting to get equal racing opportunities, they were being warned about the “dangers” of running from the medical community.

In ancient times, Aristotle wrote that men have more teeth than women because it seemed logical to him; apparently, it never occurred to him to look in his wife’s mouth and count. In the same way, even as recently as 20 years ago, women runners were told that they were risking sagging breasts, fallen ovaries, and infertility, even though no evidence exists to support these claims.

Training affects women the same way that it does men—with more running, cardiovascular fitness improves, body fat decreases, and so on. Yes, on average, women will always be slower than men, owing to biological differences (some of which are related to childbirth) such as higher essential body fat stores. But stating that fact is different than saying that women are at risk from running.

Still think that women are too frail to run? Consider that it’s in ultramarathons (races of 30 miles and longer) that women’s performance comes closest to men’s. Why is that? The leading theory can’t be proved in a lab, but it sounds right to me: In these ultraendurance events, where a big part of the battle is mental, women are simply tougher than men.

(Myth #2) “You’ll ruin your knees.”

I hear some version of this statement about once a week. I worry more about injuring myself rolling my eyes in reaction than I do about my knees becoming arthritic because of running. Yes, people get injured running. They’re usually caused by trying to do too much too soon at too quick a pace and by ignoring the body’s warning signs. What the ruin-your-knees naysayers usually mean is that running is going to do longterm damage to your body, especially in the form of arthritis.

I don’t mean to be mean here, and I know that this statement is often made with good intentions, but did you ever notice that the people making it don’t exactly look like they view their bodies as temples? Instead, they’re using the myth about ruining your knees to justify their own inactivity and to make themselves feel better about that by trying to make you feel worse.

I seriously doubt that the people making this prediction know that several studies comparing long-time runners to sedentary people have shown no difference in the rate at which people got arthritis. Also, studies comparing 55-and-older arthritis sufferers have found that over a five-year period, both the runners’ and the nonrunners’ arthritis got worse at the same rate. In other words, even in people who already had arthritis (which is often inherited), running didn’t make it worse.

In fact, most experts agree that running can help against arthritis. First, weight-bearing exercise such as running strengthens bones and keeps joints better lubricated; “Use it or lose it” doesn’t apply just to muscles. Second, you’ll probably lose weight once you become a runner, and weighing less places less of a strain on your skeletal system than does forcing it to cart around an extra 30 pounds.

(Myth #1) “You never see runners smile.”

I guess this statement is supposed to mean that running isn’t fun. Apparently, some people think that people should be smiling all the time; to them, if you’re not smiling, you’re not having a good time. But who would want to live in a world where everyone is always smiling? Sounds too much like Brave New World, filled with happy idiots. More important, these people are just plain wrong. How often do they see runners? Do they see me out running with my friends, talking away for an hour, cracking jokes, telling stories, and sometimes even having to slow down a little because we’re laughing so hard? Look around the next time you see people running together. Watch them long enough, and I guarantee you’ll see some smiles.

The non-smiling runner Uncle Zeke has seen is probably on a solo run. Where does it say that the only sign of enjoying yourself is a smile? I bet that Uncle Zeke doesn’t grin his way through dinner or sex, but he’d probably like to repeat those experiences.

Running Versus Jogging

What is the difference between jogging and running? There are lots of ways to make the distinction—how far you run, how fast you run, why you run, how often you run, and so on ad infinitum. No, make that ad nauseum. The debates about who’s a jogger and who’s a runner are endless and fierce, but they’re also pointless. Usually, the distinction is made in a condescending way, with running taken to be superior to jogging.

Some runners like to puff themselves up by noting others’ speed and saying, “Oh, he’s just jogging.” Well, we’re all slower than someone else. The best runners in the world cover 5 kilometers (3.1 miles; the distance is also called 5K) at just a bit slower than 4:00 per mile. The best marathoners in the world run sub-5:00 miles for 26.2 miles. By their standards, I guess we’re all joggers, huh? So let’s scratch pace as what makes one person a jogger and another person a runner. Is the difference the distance run? As I said, about 400,000 Americans completed a marathon in 1996.

Bob Kennedy doesn’t run farther than 15 miles at a time in his training, but Kennedy holds the American record for 5K, which he has covered at roughly 4:10 per mile. Think any of those marathoners would call him a jogger? So maybe the difference is how often you run. That has to be good a way to know who’s serious (trumpet blasts: a runner!) and who’s just dogging it (cue the boos: a jogger). Bob Ray, of Parkville, MD, has run at least 4 miles a day, every day, since April 1968. Ed Eyestone is a Mormon and almost always takes Sunday off from running for religious purposes. Eyestone is also a two-time U.S. Olympian in the marathon. Bob Ray wouldn’t call Eyestone a jogger, and neither would anyone else. As you’ll see later in this book, it’s what you do with your days of running, not how many you can string together, that really matters.

And what about why you run? One old saw is that the difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry form. This saying was supposed to mean that by entering races, you somehow graduated from the vile level of jogger to the promised land of being a runner. I know plenty of people who faithfully put in their miles, but for a variety of reasons choose not to race.

One of my old rivals, Tom Fleming, who twice won the New York City Marathon, runs 10 miles most days at faster than 7:00 per mile. But he doesn’t care to compete anymore. Does that mean he’s now a jogger? Another distinction along these lines that I’ve heard is that joggers are in it for the exercise, runners for the sport. This distinction is just plain silly. I can no more single out the one reason that I run any more than I can name the quality that I love most about my wife. In both cases, many aspects thrill me, and each aspect plays off of all the others.

OK, so what is the difference? There isn’t any. Jogging, running—call it what you want. You’ll know when you’re doing more than walking. Why have I spent all this time making this point? Because it’s easy for beginning runners to feel that what they’re doing isn’t important. Often, the people who make them feel that way the most are veteran runners, who forget what it’s like to take those first tentative steps. Their attitude can cause a lot of beginners to feel that there’s some standard they have to measure up to. There isn’t; the only one that matters is your own satisfaction.

8,000,000 Runners Can’t Be Wrong

How many runners are there in the United States? That depends on who you ask and who you define as a runner. According to the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA), more than 22 million Americans ran in 1996. That’s about one in 12 Americans! However, the NSGA figures count anyone who ran more than five times that year as a runner. So that statistic includes all those people who made a New Year’s resolution to run, hit the roads a few times a week for a month, but then gave it up as they lost motivation (does this describe you?).

I’m not saying that it’s not great that 22 million Americans ran more than five times in 1996. But running is different from something like camping, which, according to the NSGA, more than 44 million Americans did in 1996. The hard-core outdoorsy crowd might not agree with me here, but if you go camping once a month or so, you can safely say that you’re a camper.
Running is different. Within even a week of training, your cardiovascular fitness starts to improve. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true—stop running, and you start to lose the benefits. If you run 10 times in a month and then give it up for six months, you’ll be starting from scratch if you take it up again. Contrast that with camping, where you might take a few trips in the summer and then not go again until spring. I’d bet you wouldn’t find yourself just standing at the campsite, baffled as to how to set up a tent, start a fire, and so on.

To be a runner, you have to keep at it. That’s why the statistics gathered by American Sports Data (ASD), a research organization that tracks Americans’ participation in 58 sports and activities, provide more accurate numbers. In addition to overall participation, this organization tracks what it calls “frequent participation.” For running, frequent participation means going at least 100 times in a year. That number seems right to me. If you run at least 100 times per year, you’re probably running about twice a week. That’s really the minimum of what you can do and expect to make progress in terms of endurance, distance, and so on.

Just a little more than 8 million Americans met ASD’s definition of frequent participants in running in 1996. It’s not 22 million, but it’s still a lot of people—roughly 3 percent of the American population running at least twice a week. Even more encouraging is the fact that more than 5 million Americans ran at least 150 days in 1996, according to ASD. That’s almost every other day. Only fitness walking and lifting with free weights can claim more adherents at this level of participation.

Why jog and run?

Other people run for different reasons. A lot of runners, especially young ones, get into it for the competition. They want to see how fast they can run a mile or whether they can beat their next-door neighbor in the local 5K. Other people run primarily for psychological reasons. They like the stress relief, reflection time, and sense of being in control that running brings.
Here’s a baker’s dozen of some of the most popular reasons to run:

1. Running is a great way to lose weight.
2. Regular aerobic exercise, such as running, decreases the risk of heart disease.
3. Running is one of the most effective ways to improve cardiovascular fitness.
4. Running is a great way to quit smoking.
5. Regular aerobic exercise reduces the risk of some cancers.
6. When you become fitter by running, you’re more likely to improve other aspects of your lifestyle, such as your diet.
7. Running is the most convenient of sports; you can do it almost anytime, anywhere.
8. People who have a high level of physical fitness usually have a positive self-image.
9. Running is cheap; all you need are a good pair of running shoes and a few pieces of running apparel.
10. Fitter people are more productive on the job.
11. Running with others is a great way to build friendships.
12. Being fit increases mental sharpness; regular exercisers are able to concentrate longer and are better problem solvers.
13. Running is one of the best stress relievers around.

You might have noticed that some of these reasons can apply to other forms of exercise, such as cycling or walking. I have nothing against these sports, but you might have also noticed that some of these reasons only pertain to running.