How to start running without hating it

Here's what usually happens when someone decides to start running. They lace up, head out the door, and run as fast as they can for as long as they can. That's about four minutes. Then they walk home, lungs burning, legs shaking, and conclude that running is awful and they're bad at it.

Neither is true. They just ran at a pace that a trained runner would call a hard interval, on their first day. Of course it was awful.

If you want to know how to start running and not hate it, the fix is almost insultingly simple: slow down. Then slow down more.

Rule one: you should be able to talk

The single most important thing a beginner runner can learn is what "easy" actually feels like. Easy means you could hold a conversation. Full sentences, not gasped fragments. If you couldn't chat to someone jogging next to you, you're going too fast.

This will feel absurdly slow. It might feel slower than walking. That's fine. Pace is not the goal right now. Time on your feet is the goal, and you can only accumulate time on your feet if you're not destroying yourself.

Almost every experienced runner does most of their running at this easy pace. The fast stuff is a small slice on top. Beginners have it backwards: all fast, no easy, and then they wonder why it never gets better.

Rule two: walking is part of running

Run-walk is not a beginner crutch. It's how you build the ability to run continuously without getting hurt.

A first week might look like:

• ›Walk five minutes to warm up
• ›Run one minute easy, walk two minutes. Repeat six to eight times.
• ›Walk five minutes to cool down

Do that three times in the week, on non-consecutive days. When it feels comfortable, stretch the run intervals and shrink the walks: two and two, then three and one, then five and one. Over a couple of months, the walks disappear on their own. You don't have to force it.

Rule three: three days a week is plenty

Running is repetitive impact. Your bones, tendons, and joints adapt to it, but slower than your lungs do. This is why beginners get injured: their fitness improves fast enough to run more, but their legs aren't ready for it.

Three days a week, never on consecutive days, gives everything time to catch up. If you also lift, that fits neatly: run one day, lift the next. There's a whole post on making the two coexist: how to run and lift in the same week.

Rule four: build slowly, and back off sometimes

Add a little each week. A few more minutes total, or one longer run interval. Then, every third or fourth week, do a bit less. Your body adapts during the easier week, not during the hard ones. Skipping the easy week is how "I feel great" turns into "my shin hurts" a fortnight later.

If something hurts in a sharp, specific way, stop. Soreness that's dull and general is normal. Pain that makes you change how you run is not.

Shoes and gear, briefly

Buy running shoes from a running shop where someone watches you jog for thirty seconds. Don't buy the ones that look best. Everything else, wear what you have. You don't need a watch, a belt, or special socks to start. You can want those later.

What to expect

The first two weeks feel clumsy. Around week three or four, a run happens where you finish and think "I could have kept going". That's the moment. From there it gets steadily easier, as long as you don't respond to feeling good by immediately doubling everything.

Progress for a beginner runner is not pace. It's:

• ›You ran three times this week
• ›The run intervals got longer without the effort going up
• ›You stopped dreading it

The 5K comes. The pace comes. They come faster if you stop chasing them in week one.

Where a plan helps

The hard part of self-coaching running isn't knowing this. It's resisting the urge to speed up when you feel good, and knowing when to back off before you get hurt. That's what a coach watches for, and it's what exrsz does: it sets your easy pace from how you actually run, builds the walks out gradually, and pulls the volume down before your shins complain. Or follow the rules above and coach yourself. Either way: slow down.