Whenever I have a new column in Runner’s World, as I do this month, people get in touch and ask me if I have any advice on starting to run. Although I’ve never thought of myself as any kind of exercise guru, enough people have asked me this that I actually came up with an answer, and, forced to make it brief enough for Twitter, I even came up with an acronym, in honor of and in homage to Dan Savage (for whom “GGG” means something entirely different). My own 3Gs are after the jump.

Start Gradually – As a short, stocky guy with stubby legs who nonetheless managed to qualify for the Boston Marathon twice, I am living proof that anybody (barring an injury or other physical problem) can run, and run well.   You were in fact born to run,  and you can run far, and you can run fast – but you can’t do it right away. If you go out and try to run three miles, or even, for some people, a mile, your heart will pound and your legs and feet will ache and your lungs will catch fire and you will say to yourself, “This is miserable and I hate it” and you will be right to do so.

So if you’re starting from indolence, don’t go run three miles, or even a mile. Walk a mile, and break into a jog every couple of hundred yards or so… just enough to get your heart pounding a bit.  Then, in a day or two, try it again, jogging a little more,  or going a little further, or both. If you stress yourself just the right amount, you’ll improve quite rapidly, and you will find yourself able to run that three miles sooner than you think possible.  There are many beginning programs that advise just this method… many people have recommended the Couch to 5K program to me.

Have a Goal. I once was lucky enough to run with Paul Carozza, a former world class 800m sprinter who is the resident running guru of Austin, Texas, a running mecca., and the founder of the running company RunTex. He said, “We don’t do exercise, exercise is a chore. We help athletes train, because training is a pleasure. ” In this, he is correct.  Everybody has something they enjoy doing – cooking, playing video games,  playing music, driving, even shopping – and part of that enjoyment is improving your abilities.  The human capacity for work is directly related to positive feedback, meaning: evidence you’re getting better.  In running, how do you measure your performance? Not, please, by weight loss. That’s a mental trap, because you could be getting much fitter without losing weight, and you can lose weight without getting fitter (although many runners, myself among them, lost a lot of weight as they trained.)

No: runners measure their progress by racing. NOT, please, by winning… I have never won a race and neither will you.  But there are road races practically every weekend in every area in the country… 5Ks, 10Ks, ten milers, half marathons, marathons, ultras, and more.  Pick one, preferably a short one, say a 5K (3.1 miles.), three months or so into the future.  As an extra incentive, it can be held far away, some place you want to visit. When you show up on race day morning, you will find tall, skinny young people who expect to win it, and slow, and/or old and/or obese people who expect to come in last. You will be neither of those. You will be somewhere in the middle, attempting something you once never thought you could do, and then you will do it, and then when you cross the line they may say your name and may give you a medal and/or a banana, and you will feel… great. Do not underestimate your own ability to be impressed with yourself. You may say to yourself, “Wow, that was fun, now I’ve checked it off,” and go back to your couch. But you most probably will say: I wonder if I can do that faster?

Find a Group. This last is the one part of my advice that most other people are resistant to. And I understand it, because I ran by myself from when I began, at age 15, to age 40, and I thought I treasured that solitude: it was contemplative, it was meditative, it was personal private time, blah blah blah.  But it was only when I joined a running group that I began to really improve my running… why? Because we are social animals, and we like company. Because seeing and talking with friends is more pleasant than spending a half an hour or an hour inside your own head, thinking, “Man, this hurts.”  But mainly because you and your running friends will keep each other honest, and keep each other on track, literally and figuratively.  Simply put, it’s a lot harder to turn over and go back to sleep if you know that your three friends are waiting for you out there on the corner. If you’re competitive, you’ll enjoy trying to beat them. If you’re not, you’ll enjoy failing to beat them. 

And by “running group,” I don’t mean, necessarily, the local running club, the one with a website and its sponsored races and newsletter, though those can be great – I belong to one.  A “group” is you and at least one other person. Ideally, you all should be starting from the same place, and aiming for the same goal, but as long as you’re around the same ability level, you’ll benefit from each other’s company.  If you do fall in with a group of more experienced and fitter runners, you’ll benefit from their positive example and their wisdom. If you run with people less advanced than you are, you’ll inspire and instruct them.  Of my three “Gs,” this is actually the most important. Find the right group to go with, and there’s no end to the distance you’ll travel.

One last note… a Twitter commenter added a “Fourth G” which stands for having a Good time, and I agree; running is and should be (and will be) enjoyable, and if it’s not, even after you’ve trained up to a 5K or equivalent effort, then you should be doing something else. But beginners often find running to be very unpleasant, and the hard truth is, it will be hard, at first, and might be for a while.  People say that they “hate running,” which is a harsh thing to say about something our bodies actually evolved to do, but running doesn’t mind.  The trick is, just like (most) anything else, including skiing and sex, you have to get good at it before it really becomes fun, and in running, this means getting through those first three to six weeks – or even longer – of effort and discomfort until the day comes when you set out to run and the pain never comes; when your feet fly over the pavement and your breathing comes easy and the air passing over your chest feels like a cool baptism and you realize that you are, and have always been, and will be, a runner.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.