As a beginner in running, you may be looking for tips to improve your running endurance to get the most out of your running experience. Sometimes the task of building more running endurance seems too much to bear when you’re first starting out. Your breathing is labored and that alone seems to lead you straight to tired soon after your running trip begins. As a runner myself, here are some of the strategies I used to help me build more running endurance for more pleasant, less labored runs.
You Easily Become Tired
As a beginner in running, you’ll be fighting this battle quite a bit. However you’ll find that there are some ways to improve the easily acquired tired feeling that beginners at running always seem to be up against for the first couple months of their new running careers. One of the things I found helpful was slowing down. We always want to have faster times as runners, but as beginner that needs to be built upon incrementally. Slowing down worked for me and will afford your body the ability to slowly increase it’s ability to endure the new challenge it’s encountering at a pace it can tolerate well. Don’t feel as though you’ve failed by using walking breaks to get you through this new beginning too.
Doubting Yourself
Have faith in the fact that you can achieve the running goals you have set out to accomplish. If you find yourself running while in doubt, try focusing on the environment you’re running in, or the time that remains until your next walk break. Sometimes I found that knowing I had a bit of a break coming up made me doubt myself less and find more confidence about my ability to reach the destination I had set out to accomplish.
Boredom
Fighting boredom happened frequently for me as a runner. I often found one of the most effective ways to fight the boredom bug was to change my running route. I was always interested and engaged in the new sights and sounds of a running route that I had not yet traveled on. I’d find new places to shop at, or parks to take my kids to as I ran through these new places.
Hungry, Thirsty, Hot, Cold
I found that planning stops to refill my hydration belt along my running route helped to decrease any distracting thirst issues. Combine that strategy with some energy gels, bars, or beans in your belt to calm your hunger and you’ll be running in a very focused frame of mind. To battle the cold, tie a long sleeve t-shirt around your waist that you can just slip on over your head. In hot weather, take advantage of any water along the way to douse yourself with as you run by. I often doused myself at parks along a running route which had a water fountain I could access..