Ben Kaplan - How To Run: From First Steps to Finish Line

Like anything in life, showing up is 90% of whats called for. The difference with running is that unlike work (for most), parenting (for most) or almost any other more social pursuit, you are ultimately responsible to yourself, first and foremost. So, here are a few chapters designed to help light that fire under your feetand keep it lit as you work towards your first race.

Embarrassment kept Lesley Taylor away from the treadmill for more than a year. Overweight and unhappy, Taylor, then 31 and weighing more than 200 pounds, wanted to make a change in her life but didnt know where to begin.

I thought, Who am I to be running? I was just a regular, normal person and I thought running was for fast people, not people like me, she says.

Over the past few years, beginner athletes like Taylor have begun running in droves, making it one of the fastest-growing amateur sports in North America. Its benefits are legion, providing not only an all-entry starting line for personal fitness, but also a sense of community and self-confidence.

Learning how to turn a running resolution into an action plan is the goal of this book, and over the next few chapters, well visit with experts of every stripe in order to help you lace up. Personally, running provides with me balance, structure and a sense of control. I know a thing or two about feeling embarrassed and Im usually more at home eating buffalo wings and watching football than trading nutrition tips with the geeks at the Running Room. But with this column, Im going to recommit to running and training, watching what I eat and passing on the Du Mauriers to get myself in shape for not only the spring races, but for taking better control of my life.

For running novices such as Taylor, the first step is overcoming the intimidation factor. I didnt know a lot of runners back when I started, I thought all runners had to be small and fit, says Taylor, who credits Running Room clinics with giving her the confidence to run outside. I was amazed to discover I wasnt the only middle-aged fat person who wanted to learn how to run.

Alex Coffin, a track and field coach at the University of New Brunswick who was hired last year by Irving Oil to promote good health at the company, says becoming a runner is no more difficult than taking a first step.

We try to guard people against the all-or-nothing mentality, its much more important to build a foundation, says the 42-year-old Coffin, a seven-time winner of the New Brunswick marathon. The key thing is to make running almost a daily occurrenceeven if its only just a quick 10-minute jogand then it becomes like having a cup of coffee in the morning, part of your daily routine.

Taylor, a bank manager in Toronto, was able to successfully incorporate running into her daily lifestyle and found that, in addition to quitting smoking, she was suddenly surrounded by a whole new group of friends. She ran a 5K, then a 10K, and eventually moved on to a half-marathon, then a marathon, and today shes running Iron Man competitions.

Im still trying to lose weight, Im 20 pounds away from my goal and even then I wont be super-skinny, but Im 47, I dont want the body of someone whos 21, says Taylor, who credits her dedication to running with helping her shed 75 pounds over the past 15 years. If youre a regular person not involved with running, its easy to have this perception that runners are all these super-skinny Kenyan guys, but people with padding are running, too.

This book is for the people with padding and the ones who drank too much on New Years Eve; its for the older people who have never even jogged before; and its for the everyday people just trying to find some balance in their lives. Heres your first tip: Basically, all running shoes are the samedont believe the fancy labels.

One of my favourite running stories is about Wolf Bronet, a Holocaust survivor who moved to Montreal and began running out of the YMCA on Westbury Avenue in 1954. Bronet, 88, as dedicated a runner as youre likely to meet, doesnt spend too much time on the science of running.

There was no such thing as meshugenah endorphins, all we knew was that it made us feel free, says Bronet, who has run both with Terry Fox and at the Boston Marathon and still goes out regularly on two-hour jogs. Yeah, theres medical science and all the rest of this stuff, but to me, runnings the most natural thing.

In hindsight, that freedom that Bronet was feeling may have been the medically proven phenomenon known as the runners high. A neurochemical response to the bodys release of opioids (the meshugenah endorphins that researchers recently demonstrated at the University of Bonn), the runners high is a feeling of euphoria, a state of bliss when strenuous exercise gives way to a feeling of calm.

Its the part in a run where endorphins peak and everything you experience feels like its no longer work, says Dr. Marni Wesner, a physician at the Glen Sather Sports Medicine Clinic at the University of Alberta. Wesner, who works with both elite runners and Skate Canada, says the runners high is a lucid physiological state and even has its own polar opposite: the wall.

It started with a blurry haze. I was wobbling and my vision went out and I got really dizzy, says Simon Bairu, who many believed would break the Canadian world record at the New York City marathon, but who instead hit the wall. Bairu, 27, is one of Canadas top runnershe holds the Canadian record for 10,000-metresbut hed never competed in a marathon before and, after running the first half of the race too quickly, he hit a point where he could no longer move.

I went down and I tried to get back up, but my legs were done, says Bairu. If I am racing at the Olympics, its going to come down to mental preparednessand thats something I learned in New York.

Part of being mentally prepared is bracing yourself for the highs and lows of any run. And whether youre doing a Learn to Run clinic or your 10th Iron Man, there will be both a time when you feel like you can run forever and a time when you feel like you cant take even one more step. Brian Vaughan is the president of Gu Energy Lab and a competitive cyclist who bikes in 24-hour races. Gu, which was started by Vaughans biophysicist father to make something for his sisters first 100-mile ultra-marathon, is a leader in sports stimulants.

You need to be alert and present to appreciate the calm that can come when running, thats the sweet spot, says Vaughan, 44, from his company headquarters in Berkeley, Calif. Vaughan describes his 24-hour bike races as a series of mental phases. The first four hours are warm-up, the next eight to 12 hours are the sweet spotthe biking equivalent of the runners highand then, in the middle of the night, the wall.

Youre thinking: How did I get myself into this mess? But then the sun rises, and its a whole new beginning, and the body and brain take on a different state, he says. Vaughan calls this state enlightened, and its a feeling he tries to capture with amino acids, electrolytes and vitamins C and E in his gels.