Running tips for Beginners

Hi readers, I have mentioned eight points below which are good enough to prepare and help you in getting started with the running:

1. Start with a 30 mins walk on day one. Can you feel your breath? On day one focus on analyzing how body is reacting to the activity. You can try running a 200 meter in between your walk and try to understand body response. You might feel breathless but don’t worry, this is normal and happens with everyone who starts such activity after long gap.
2. You can also start running from day one, running is not like swimming where one needs to attend some kind of training. It is something which every one of us can do naturally, remember the school time when we all use to play for hours and hours in ground???? What has happened with us is that, over the period of time we almost stopped running and hence body has forgotten how to respond in case of such activity.
3. One important point to remember is START SLOW, your body does not adapt quickly to changes, it has the tendency to resist. Run as per your comfort level and focus on BREATHING, don't rush (that you will do in races), your main objective in initial days should be to make your body aware of the change.
4. If you are running after a long gap then legs will pain and that is OK, it should happen. In case you are experiencing pain, take rest, eat good food and give proper recovery time.
5. At the same time, you should maintain consistency in schedule, run at least thrice in a week, again, distance or speed does not matter.
6. There is a thin line between pain and INJURY, stop immediately if you feel something is wrong, DO NOT RUN or do any stressful activity in case of injury. Let body recover completely and wait for at least two days once you have a feeling that injury is all right.
7. Stretching forms an import aspect in any sport and same goes with running as well, do at least fifteen minutes pre and post running stretches, it improves muscle quality a lot, you should not feel heavy legs(like some rocks are tied up to your legs) when you wake up in the morning. If this is the case then surely you are not doing proper stretching.
8. Shoes, often people talk a lot about xyz brands shoe is good and all that stuff. I would suggest start with a normal shoe and when you reach a certain level think about shoes. Shoes do matter a lot but you should be mentally ready to invest money in shoes and that mental preparation will come once you are consistent with activity.

All the points mentioned above makes NO sense if you DO NOT SET A GOAL.

Setting up a realistic goal is the only way to success, be it anything on this planet.

So on day one itself decide a goal, it could be anything like following:

"I will run two km at the end of thirty days"

"I will run non-stop for fifteen minutes after ten runs"

"I want a feel good factor about myself hence I will run thrice a week at least"

"I will complete a five km marathon which is scheduled after two months"

Last, do not think that it is not my cup of tea, let's keep criticism job for others and we focus on enjoying the run.

Positivity through Running

Recently I completed Satara Ultra Hill half Marathon race where more than five thousand people all across the globe participated and most of them finished the race in a good manner. Being my first race it was quite exciting and challenging experience since it was an hill marathon(almost 500 meter ascend and descend), but I will not be sharing much details about my performance since I would like to share about an important observation about the overall ambiance during the race.

Generally when I travel into the busy streets of Mumbai I feel uncomfortable due to crowd, traffic and ceaseless amount of noise all over the place. All the mentioned three factors were present at the venue and during the race also. There was not a single moment in the race where I was not surrounded by ten persons at least but somehow I felt no issues with so much rush, not with the fact that there was hardly a distance of five feet between me and others in all directions.

At a distance of every kilometer we were greeted with different kinds of music bands be it a rock band, DJs or everyone’s favorite Nashik dhol. If the same set of bands were placed in between, from my home to the bus stop, I would have got frustrated a lot but somehow I really enjoyed the music. First time in my life felt a connection with the hard banging loud music.  

The point I am trying to emphasis is there was something peculiar about those three hours. The entire event was filled with positive energy, even when some race participant got tired an unknown person behind him pushed him to go ahead. I myself asked few guys to buck up in last one or two kilometers. We saw school kids cheering us on Sunday morning at 6 AM (Imagine getting up on Sunday morning to support people whom you don’t know at all, sounds weird). People from all age group stood in a disciplined manner on the road side to boost us with all the energetic words like “Common”, “You can do it”, “Keep going” etc.

If I think now as to what was their benefit standing on the road, it is simply nothing, but they were very happy, clapping continuously and cheering us. As they say real joy is in giving and not taking, they were certainly giving us what we needed. I could feel the exchange of positive energy both ways. It was a pure give and take of brotherhood without any kind of expectations. An aged couple standing on the hill askes us not to give up till the end, I don’t know them but will always remember the couple rest of my life because when I wanted someone to help me they did by supplying the capsule of positive energy.

The beauty of running or any other sport lies in here, as a sportsman many of us battle with internal negative energy, many a times we feel like giving up during our training. Sometimes we give up or fight back. But when the race day comes we are prepared both physically and mentally, rather mentally more. That same positive energy accumulated by us during our training goes out to the people cheering us all around and same comes back with more force and conviction. At the end it forms a kind of a cloud full of positive energy, motivation, euphoria, enthusiasm and self-belief.

When such kind of peculiar cloud forms around you, all the minor negative energies fade away and remains an unadulterated, strong and powerful mindset which results in an enjoyable race. Sports are important in this aspect, they let us throw out what is not needed and filter only good things. The power of sports lies in here, in the process of making ourselves strong, irrespective of our awareness we tend to attract only righteous entities.

This is something I wanted to share with all of you, running or any sport is one of the best ways to make you inner self optimistic, cheerful and peaceful from within.