Running and Your Health
April 29th, 2010 | 
My boyfriend used to hate running with a passion. He claimed that he was simply too tall and awkward to run with any hopes of getting better. Besides this, he claimed that whenever he would go for a run, he would feel as if he couldn’t breathe. When I sat down with him to go over his running “issues,” it turned out that he actually had a great deal of potential to improve his running. His main problem centered around consistency.
In order to improve at anything in life, you have to be consistent. Not only do you have to be consistent, but you have to develop a routine or learned pattern of behavior. Whether it is making sure that you get eight to ten hours of sleep a night or whether it is trying to do your work during a certain time frame, you have to learn to be disciplined to do what you need to in order to achieve any sort of result. For example, the person who goes to bed every day at totally different hours will find that they have a difficult time getting to sleep. Or, they may discover, that as a result of their erratic sleeping patterns, they are unable to get through a regular day of work the following day. The same is true of dieting. If you eat a lot of junk food one day and then starve yourself the next, you will never improve your overall diet.
With running, consistency is the first step. If you want to improve at it, pick a time of day that works best for you to start running. If running isn’t your most favorite form of exercise, think of things that will help to motivate you as you exercise. For instance, it may be motivating to learn that running is an excellent way to stay in shape and get your health on the right track. Not only this, but running has been said to help people lose tons of weight as well as regulate diabetes and heart disease. There are some things to keep in mind though for those of you out there who are new to the running world. For example, when you run, the best times to do it are early in the morning or later in the evening. This is especially true if you live in a more urban area as the traffic and pollution from traffic will be less noticeable in the morning hours or later in the evening for the simple fact that there are less vehicles on the roads.
When you run, you should pick a route that is safe. This means, choose to run in an area that is well populated, is well illuminated and preferably has a side walk. With regards to clothing, no matter what time of day that you run, choose clothes that are light and breathable- but most importantly which are color safe. By ‘color safe’, this means choosing clothes that other motorists can see clearly such as a white t-shirt or even clothes that have reflective qualities. At night, it is not uncommon to see runners wearing reflective vests so that motorists can see them even more clearly.
Make sure that you are hydrated the day before you go for your run- not the day of. While you may think that taking a couple of swigs from your water bottle prior to embarking on a run may help, it actually doesn’t make that much of a difference. The real difference comes in the night before. Eat well, get plenty of rest and hydrate and you should be able to go out and have a decent run the next day.
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