Running is a great way to stay healthy, and it can have effects on everything from your eyes to your sleep. However, it’s also a time drag, and in today’s busy world, it can be hard to fit in a run on top of all your other commitments. If you’ve fallen out of the habit of running often and want to get back into it, then here are some tips to follow to ensure that you build time into your day to get running again.
Pace yourself
Going for a run isn’t much use if you’re just going to collapse onto the ground after five minutes, so it’s a good idea to plan your trip before you go. If you haven’t been running for a long time, then you may well find it quite difficult to get going again. This means that you should learn to pace yourself: why not commit, for example, to three runs each week, and make it slightly longer each time? By learning how to breathe when running, meanwhile, you can ensure that you control the flow of oxygen around your body in a more efficient way so that you don’t get puffed out quite as easily.
Make time
Once you’ve taken the kids to school and got everything done at work and home, there are barely enough hours left in the day to think about running. Instead of just waiting for the ideal moment for a run to come up, why not instead schedule it in? If you know that you have a gap in between a school drop-off and a grocery order collection, for example, then you can easily tell yourself that this is your designated running time. Once it’s in the diary, you won’t feel like you’re having to sacrifice something else in order to achieve your aim.
Willpower
If all else fails, however, you may simply have to tell yourself that running is something that you’re going to have to do in order to meet your fitness goals. By setting an alarm for 6am and placing the alarm clock across the room, for example, you’ll be able to force yourself out of bed and insist to your mind that you’ll go running. It’s not pleasant, but it may well be what you need to do in order to get yourself up and active and get back into the running mindset!
Going for a run is a great way to hit your exercise requirements for the day, and it’s also a rewarding activity that makes you feel satisfied and pleased with yourself once you get back home. However, it’s all too easy to fall out of the running habit, especially if it’s not something you’ve done for a while. Luckily, there are ways to solve this problem. From ensuring that you build time into your schedule to go for the run, to simply falling back on good old willpower tricks to make sure that you do it, you can get your running shoes on and get back pounding the sidewalks right away.
