first running efforts with flying colours.If you're a Runner's World UK magazine subscriber, you can see all 15 lessons here. Otherwise, enjoy these five as a preview - and if you want to subscribe, you can save 30% right here.1 Welcome to the start line

You've heard the usual recommendations for so long that you accept them as gospel. And most of the advice is solid. Who can argue with putting in mileage, peaking for races and stretching after a run? But just because many coaches, sports scientists and other experts a...

In the mid-1970s, Runner's World Medical Editor George Sheehan, M.D., confirmed that he was hardly the only runner beset by injuries: a poll of the magazine's readers revealed that 60 per cent reported chronic problems. To describe himself and the rest of us, he quotes author Ral...

The popular image of professional triathletes may be of young, hyper-fit, intensely focused super-beings who spend the winter training in a sun-drenched paradise at the expense of a sponsor with bottomless pockets.The mundane but oddly reassuring reality is that many of the count...

You've been training for months. You've spent more early mornings in running shoes than you have tucked up in bed; you've done short runs, long runs, quick ones and slow ones, all of them at paces ranging from 'race' to 'rather not actually, thanks'.But despite all the hours of p...

When you make a meal from scratch you know exactly what you're going to be eating and you can add as many healthy ingredients as you like. Unfortunately, holding down a job, having a life outside that job and training for triathlon often leave little time for preparing a decent m...

It's an all too common story: runner sets achievable goals; runner puts in the necessary physical training to meet goals; runner falls short on race day. So, what's the problem? Could it be that you're spending too much time becoming a stronger runner on the road, and precious li...

Clubs regularly attend races as a teamThe days when running clubs were the sole preserve of ultra-competitive elite racers hell-bent on crushing the opposition at all costs and putting in more hours than Geb or Paula are thankfully long-gone. With hundreds of clubs catering fo...

© Getty Images The two Olympic marathons held last August in Beijing were literally races for the ages. Kenya's Samuel Wanjiru, then 21, broke more than an Olympic record with his 2:06:32 win; he crushed long-held conventional wisdom that marathon performance pea...

Rome Marathon (Italy, March)It's no wonder that foreign runners make up more than a third of the field for this race, which is effectively a 26.2-mile sightseeing tour around the Eternal City. The race is held on a Sunday in March, and takes in the ancient splendours of the Colos...