"I'm out of shape, overweight and I've never run before."Just like the millions of couch-potatoes-turned-runners before you. "Beginners all say, 'This seems crazy. Can I do it?'" says Bob Glover, co-author of The Runner's Handbook (£9.99, Penguin

So you want to start running? You've heard it's inexpensive, great for your health, the best way to lose weight (and keep it off). You've got friends who run, and they're trim, happy, centred and productive.Running also looks like a straightforward

the final miles of a marathon, you should be able to run faster.This extract is from The Runner's World Complete Book of Running by RW USA Editor Amby Burfoot.

and the rest of us, he quotes author Ralph Waldo Emerson: "There is a crack in everything God has made." With all the amazing advancements in sports medicine, you'd think that our rates of injury would have dropped since then. But 30 years after running's first

At Runner's World we try to practise what we preach, and so, along with following abstemious diets (well, we try), we also follow our training advice. That means regular speedwork, long runs, rest days and the dreaded hillwork. Repeatedly dragging

When Grete Waitz stood on the starting line of the 1982 Boston Marathon, she had good reason to be confident. After all, she had already entered and won three New York City Marathons, running each of them faster than the previous one. She

. Pierce, 53, still runs marathons in about 3:10, not much slower than when he first stepped to the starting line more than two decades ago.His secret? The three-day training week. Pierce follows the usual advice to alternate hard days with easy days

Jimmy Brehm had completed four marathons, with a best time of 3:51. He wanted to run faster. Andy Goodwin had finished two marathons, with a best of 3:21, and he wanted to become faster, too. Kim Halley had other issues. She had run two marathons 10

juncture, it even threatens the foundations of exercise physiology.This is quite a change from the time, not long ago, when carbohydrate was King of all Exercise Land, and giving nutrition advice to runners was easy: eat carbohydrate before, during

important marathon-related health risk facing runners everywhere. The history of exercise-associated hyponatremia is closely tied to Dr Tim Noakes, a South African sports medicine expert and author of The Lore of Running. In the 1970s Noakes was a devoted