Beginners Guide to Running: Fifteen Golden Tips

By Peter Windross

Starting to run is an exciting time. The start of this journey is a wonderful place to be. It is a great time in your life, full of discoveries and new things to learn.

▪Running can be a life long adventure.
▪Running can take you to all parts of our fabulous planet.
▪Running makes you happier and healthier.
▪Running decreases fatigue, boosts concentration and enhances your mental powers.
▪Running helps stave off the effects of ageing.
▪Running helps you enjoy sex more and makes you a better lover.

Who is this book for? Anyone who would like to know a little more about this great sport and obsession for so many. People all around the world run. They run for peace, solitude, solidarity and companionship. Running joins communities and people from all walks of life.

To find out more about the benefits, how to do it and how to avoid some of the common pitfalls, join me and read on.

Why fifteen golden tips? These are the most helpful pointers I would have wanted to know when starting out. These are just signposts, not an exhaustive list.

But I hope these pages inspire you to lace up your shoes, get off the sofa and step out of the front door. If you achieve this and come back with a smile, then my work is done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Windross
• Release date: Dec 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310266669

Peter Windross

Dr Harley has twenty years experience as a family practitioner. He has a specialist interest in weight loss. He lives and works with his young family near the New Forest in the UK. He has tried every diet out there for himself and now runs ultra-marathons (for fun!). He brings these years of detailed study to bear on his writing. Through kind good humour he loves to teach how the body and brain work together. It is through understanding these that we can start to make meaningful differences in our lives. He enjoys writing books about how to do stuff a little better. He reads more about running in his spare time than is good for him. He is often told that he should get out more, though he obviously thinks that means on the trails.

Book preview

Beginners guide to running

- fifteen golden tips

By Dr Peter Windross

Published on Smashwords 2015

All rights reserved

Dr Peter Windross

Brainsolutions.co.uk

Introduction

Starting to run is an exciting time. The start of this journey is a wonderful place to be. It is a great time in your life, full of discoveries and new things to learn.

Running can be a life long adventure.

Running can take you to all parts of our fabulous planet.

Running makes you happier and healthier.

Running decreases fatigue, boosts concentration and enhances your mental powers.

Running helps stave off the effects of ageing.

Running helps you enjoy sex more and makes you a better lover.

Who is this book for? Anyone who would like to know a little more about this great sport and obsession for so many. People all around the world run. They run for peace, solitude, solidarity and companionship. Running joins communities and people from all walks of life.

To find out more about the benefits, how to do it and how to avoid some of the common pitfalls, join me and read on.

Why fifteen golden tips? These are the most helpful pointers I would have wanted to know when starting out. These are just signposts, not an exhaustive list.

But I hope these pages inspire you to lace up your shoes, get off the sofa and step out of the front door. If you achieve this and come back with a smile, then my work is done.

What is running?

Running is the act of propelling yourself faster than walking. Between each foot contact you are airborne.

We learn to run as children, but it is a rather complex business. We are even advised to learn to walk first.

We improve in speed and efficiency as our bodies become stronger and better coordinated. It is all about getting the right muscles working at the right time. These legs of ours have some muscles contracting and others relaxing, timed perfectly to the microsecond. While the active muscles contract (agonists), others have to relax just the right amount (antagonists). The pelvis needs to be stabilised while the arms and upper trunk rotate in just the right way to counteract the rotational (torsional) forces.

Only when the brain and motor cortex is fully developed can we coordinate these complex actions. We get better in our teens and beyond. Myelin is laid down. This happens gradually as we grow. This is crucial to the whole process. This coating around the nerves makes them transmit impulses hundreds of times faster.

Like so many things in life, the tricky process of running improves with practice. The shape of the brain actually changes as we lay down new neural pathways which help you to run better. This amazing modification happens whenever we increase running throughout our life. The saying ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ does not apply here. Our muscles grow with our efforts, becoming many times more efficient at contracting.

With a little practice, six to twelve months training and good technique (quite often accompanied by some weight loss) all of us can run marathons. We become capable of this marvellous feat at about twelve years old and this lasts until we are into our eighties and beyond.

Last year I read of Fauja Singh who had just set a world record at the Toronto marathon. He took up running in his mid-eighties after he sadly lost his wife. His pre-run race breakfast consisted of a couple of biscuits and a nice cup of tea. He had just turned one hundred years old. Aged 100 1/2 he attempted and achieved eight age-group world records in an hour and a half. 100m, 200m, 400m, 1500m, the mile, 3000m and 5000m.

I'm not a great runner. I'm not an expert. I've run about forty or so marathons, a few ultra-marathons and a few races which were a bit shorter. I’m a General Practitioner for my day job (family medicine). I love running and its many benefits. I will share some of my enthusiasm, things I've learned and the very many mistakes I've made. Being average, there are plenty of these to learn from.

One

Why run?

Why do we run?

What makes us want to pick up speed from simply walking and why does it feel good?

The short answer is that we were born to. We are engineered to run. Millions of years of evolution has made us efficient runners. It is in our very nature, our bodies thrive on it and our brains are hardwired to reap rapid and cumulative benefits each and every time we make it out of the front door.

Running lights up the pleasure centre in our brains and floods both body and brain with 'happy chemicals'.

We evolved into bipeds (upright two-legged creatures) with fabulously long achilles tendons. We are also nearly bald and hairless (well, some of us anyway). This helps with efficient heat loss from exercise. We can also run and breathe with different rhythms. Along with being non-furry this is unusual in the animal kingdom. Having a breathing rate uncoupled from strides and an un-furry bodies may be why evolved to be so good running.

We are capable of sustained exercise for many hours at a time. We have lovely springy archy feet and we have super-springy calf muscles attached to our heels via our springy achilles tendons. We come fully-equipped out of the box with lots of brilliantly engineered natural springs. These return energy with every step we take. This system is most energy efficient at a brisk run.

Our livers hold enough glycogen (easy-burn fuel) for us to run about twenty miles. If we want to extend our range, we either need to take on-board fuel as we run (you can do this without stopping you clever thing - there aren't many beasts on the planet who are able manage that tricky task), or we can switch to burning fat stores. This magical switch of fuels can be done without missing a step and can propel you for distances of two hundred miles or more (though this might take a few days and I thoroughly recommend a bunch of training first!).

Enough of my enthusiasm about genetic design, running makes us feel good. It is good for the brain, staves off dementia, cures depression, builds self-esteem, helps weight loss, builds muscles, improves heart and lung function and improves sexual performance to boot.

Running releases painkilling hormones. It can also induce a meditative trance-like state with increased alpha waves in the brain. The increase in heart and muscle function accompanied by the brain oxygenation and neurochemicals released, means that no matter how tired you are when you start running - you feel much more awake and less tired when you’ve finished (which still amazes me).

Running helps promote a desire to eat healthily, drink less alcohol, promotes deep restful sleep (which you need less of to fully recharge your batteries, the fitter you become).

On top of all of this you generally end up looking a lot better naked (which seems to be a rather popular side effect).

Running is good for you.

Running is beneficial in heart disease, in diabetes, after a heart attack and lowers blood pressure.

Running