‘ I’M TOO OVERWEIGHT’

Too many people say ‘ I’ll start running when I’ve lost weight.’ Which is a shame, as running is a powerful weapon in the battle against the bulge. RW reader Annette Johnson made full use: ‘At first, I was so heavy I couldn’t jog so I had to power walk,’ she told us, having shed five stone. ‘ But soon I was able to mix short periods of walking with jogging.’ When Cuban researchers assigned overweight women to thrice-weekly jogging sessions for eight weeks they not only shed pounds, but also lowered their blood pressure and improved their cholesterol profile and waist-to-hip ratio. Research from Aarhus University, Denmark, shows the best way for heavier new runners to avoid injury is to keep total distance low in the early stages, and to increase it by no more than 10 per cent per week – the gradual progression that you’ll find in our training programme on page 62.