This extract is from The Runner's World Complete Book of Running by RW USA Editor Amby Burfoot. You can now preview it, free, for two weeks without risk or obligation. All running programmes for beginners are the same: they move you from walking

Amby Burfoot is Executive Editor of Runner's World USA, and the 1968 Boston Marathon winner Imagine that there was an exercise programme that could guarantee to get you in shape with only three identical 30-minute exercise sessions per week. I

has been studying questions like this for more than 20 years, in between running 58 marathons (with a 2:37 PB) and ultra-marathons. He is also a doctor of public health and a professor of exercise science at Appalachian State University in the USA. I

:40:04, still the Hawaii record, after first swimming 2.4 miles and then cycling 112 miles.Always a strong runner, Allen had a lightbulb moment one year at the Cherry Blossom 10-Mile in Washington, D.C. in the USA. He was warming up, doing some strides, when he

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.

. The next week, start building again, one mile at a time: eight miles, nine miles, etc.Plan Two – Run Yasso 800sWe learnt about this amazingly useful work-out in a casual conversation with RUNNER’S WORLD USA Race And Event Promotions Manager Bart Yasso

, an exercise physiologist and triathlete from James Madison University in the USA, completed a study that found cyclists drinking C+P products lasted 29 per cent longer (on a first ride) and 40 per cent longer (on a second ride 12 to 15 hours later) than C

Brooks from UCLA in the USA, so I assumed that Brooks was a lone-wolf type. Now Brooks has a large pack of followers. "I was stubborn, I kept at it, and I was right," he says. "Far from being the Darth Vader of metabolism, lactic acid is a key substance

travelled to Auckland to run the infamous 22-mile Waitakere mountains course that once reduced Snell to tears. He also tackled the original hill circuit. "It was steeper than I expected," says Hashizume, who now lives in the USA and maintains a website

30 years: inventing the Jones Counter used to measure and certify most road-race courses in the UK; writing the RunScore Programme used to score many races in the USA; and adding his maths and engineering talents to the new WMA calculations. All