Health and Fitness Help

An excellent way of losing a few pounds and getting trim while increasing your overall levels of fitness is to start running. This activity is so good at burning calories because you are forced to carry your body weight with you, rather than supporting it on a bike or on water, which is what would happen if you did cycling or swimming instead. Often, though, for every advantage there is a hidden disadvantage. In the case of running, the absence of any support means that it is a higher impact sport, and you need to ease yourself into it gently to avoid picking up injuries.

To avoid getting injured during the high intensity encountered during running, there are several things you can do. Perhaps the most important is to ensure you get yourself a good pair of running shoes which are designed for your style of running. Good running supply stores should be able to help you do this. The next thing to consider is your running form. Make sure you are running efficiently and not getting into bad habits; a coach will be able to help you with aspect of training. Finally, do not run the same route every single time. It is better to have several running routes, so you can mix up your training and also avoid overuse injuries.

For those who run more than three times a week, it is highly beneficial to create a training program which includes different types of session. The long slow run (LSR) will be at the foundation, providing a solid grounding and building endurance over long distances. Speedwork and strength training should also be added. For speedwork, it is necessary to have a flat route or get time on the track, whereas for strength sessions, it is nice to do hill repeats, so you will need to find a good route to incorporate these types of features. It is also important to try and run on many different surfaces, which can include concrete, but try to run grass and dirt trails if possible also. This will alleviate some of the stresses on your muscles, tendons and ligaments, which could otherwise result in injury.

Although there are some very practical reasons for having multiple running routes planned out, it is also good for keeping you motivated, as it is far more interesting going somewhere different on a run, rather than plodding along the same route every time you go out. You can use a great website called Mapmyrun (www.mapmyrun.com) to look for routes locally that other runners have designed, or you can come up with your own. Use the Hybrid view on the map to see the satellite photo with street names overlaid, and this will give you some idea of the terrain you will be running on. Just point and click on the map and the route will show up in red.

As you continue to create a new route on Mapmyrun, it will display the distance at the top of the screen in miles. You can change this to kilometers if you prefer, as this is good for planning out 5K or 10K races. Once finished, you can simply click on the elevation button at the bottom and you will get a graphic showing you where all the major hills are, giving you a chance to change things if you want an easy session!

There is one final great reason for having a wide selection of running routes, which is mainly aimed at women, but could equally apply to men. Running in the same places at the same time, on the same days gives stalkers, creeps and other undesirables a chance to learn your habits and running patterns. So it really does pay to stay safe by keeping things totally unpredictable, and avoid any of these kinds of problems.