This section is adapted from No Need For Speed - A Beginner's Guide To The Joy Of Running, by John Bingham. Buy this book!You may be uncomfortable hearing that no one can tell you what your fitness goals should be. No one can tell you how much

but to continue to the top. And that you’d know for sure when you reached it.Not being the best hill runner in the world, I thought I’d use some strategy. I opted for a combination of heart-rate monitoring and run/walk intervals. My thinking (and I use the term

miles away.Now what? I was having a great day. Maybe the best I’d ever had. I wasn’t running any faster than usual, having settled into a solid five-hour pace, but I felt strong and comfortable. I was well-prepared, and I wanted the medal. For a minute

was made greater by the glorious weather. If there has been a more beautiful day for a running tour through the beauty of London, I can’t imagine it. So, as in past years, at mile 24 I gave in to my soul and walked serenely for the remaining two miles

Recently I received an e-mail from a woman who hoped to become more active. She wanted to start walking and running, maybe even compete in some local 5K or 10Ks. She thought this might be a good way to lose weight and feel better. Not a bad plan

It isn’t always easy being a runner. It isn’t always easy being the Penguin. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to be both and to be true to either.One of the canons of the Penguin philosophy is that running – all running – is joyful in its own right

Many runners are too tense. They’re tense before they run, while they run and after they run. But it’s not their muscles that are tense – it’s their heads. Rather than running in the present tense, they’re always running in the past or future.Men my

like my family any more; I didn’t talk like my family; when the family got together to sit, I wanted to go out and run. Rather than seeing the positive changes that running was producing in my life, they saw only that I wasn’t the ‘old’ John

This section is adapted from No Need For Speed - A Beginner's Guide To The Joy Of Running, by John Bingham. Buy this book!Many adult-onset athletes believe that living an active lifestyle would be easier if they could trade the body they have

indiscretions, of the times I had let my ego overcome my senses, of the times I had sacrificed my body just so I could say I’d finished.Somewhere around mile 24, as I walked back to the hotel, I came upon a runner still out on the course. He looked