Your physician will consider your age, weight, fitness level, and special conditions (breathing or heart problems) to derive a sound decision. Having accurate information on your body will also help you in choosing a running program. 2. Set attainable goals. Do you want to lose weight? Or lower your cholesterol level? Heart monitors help the runner tweak his program to ensure he is training at the right intensity. Speed and distance monitors give out data such as how far he has run and how fast his pace he is running. These little devices (now installed with a GPS system) also allow storing information for future use or reference. In fact, a study involving an observation of long distance runners showed that these runners recorded almost a 50% decrease in the blood pressure. Their use of medications to lower blood pressure was also reported to have over 50% reduction. 3. Lower cholesterol Also according to a study, runners generally have lower cholesterol. The thing is, because running is most likely the same each day, you need to make it a little more exciting, something you always want to look forward to. 6. Have a running partner at certain points of your run. It s okay to run solo, some runners even prefer it, but without someone to talk to the entire run, training gets impossibly boring. We simply start to run the next day, with resolve that we will do it regularly from now on. The resolve and the intention are decent. It is in the headlong rush that makes it fairly incorrect. It may even be downright dangerous. Look before you run If you think you can start out running five miles a day starting today is a good idea, there is something wrong in your personal decision-making policies. After a time, the body learns to compensate for the lack of oxygen so that when this technique is not in use, your body is already more efficient in processing your breathed air. This is demonstrated in swimming. Swimmers do alternate breathing which is breathing every third stroke. This enables them to breathe on alternate sides without taking a breath with every stroke.