Starting to Run: A Beginner's Guide

Your first weeks

Start with run-walk, at the step you can finish now. Jeff Galloway starts new runners at 5 to 10 seconds of running a minute, the NHS Couch to 5K at 1 minute of running and 90 seconds of walking, and Nike at 2 minutes of jogging and 4 of walking.

Take each walk break before you are tired. The break keeps every running piece easy, and that is what lets you start the next one. A run you could have continued is a good run, and a run that wrecked you is the one that ends the habit.

Lengthen the running pieces only when your last sessions finished with energy to spare, and hold each ratio for two to three weeks before the next change. Plans built this way usually reach continuous running somewhere between week 5 and week 9, and you never have to drop the walk breaks to be a real runner.

How easy is easy

Judge every run by effort and not by pace. You should be able to speak in full sentences, about 4 or 5 out of 10, with no huffing and puffing, and finish able to run tomorrow. That is zone 2 in a five-zone model, and the guide on the talk test covers how to use it.

When you cannot talk, slow down and add walk breaks. No pace is too slow. Compare yourself with your own last week and not with anyone else's pace or distance.

How often

Run three days a week with a rest day or an easy walk between, and no back-to-back runs at the start. Three runs a week is enough to sustain a beginner and to improve one. Your heart and lungs adapt faster than your muscles, tendons and bones, so a day between runs is when the adapting happens. The guide on rest days covers it.

Short runs count. Twenty minutes beats zero, so on a day that is going badly shrink the run and do not skip it.

Adding more

Change one thing at a time. Add time or add a run, and add speed last. Hold a new level for two to three weeks before the next step, and do not raise distance, frequency and pace together.

The risky moment is the first time running feels easy. The urge is to double it, and a new runner who does is the one who gets hurt. Jeff Galloway sees it come 2 to 4 weeks in, when a new runner feels great, and reports that 30 to 50 percent of new runners overreach there.

After a missed or rough week, repeat the week you were on. Do not jump ahead, and do not cram the missed runs into the next week. After one bad run, adjust the next and carry on.

Aches and pain

A new runner feels new muscle soreness, and that is normal. Pain is different. If something hurts sharply, gets worse as you run or changes how you run, stop, walk home and skip the next runs for a few days. See the guide on pain versus soreness for how to tell them apart, and the guide on returning to running after an injury for the restart.

After the first month

Speed joins last and in the smallest dose. Once your runs are routine, add strides: 10 to 20 seconds at about 90% effort, a couple of days a week after an easy run, with walking or easy jogging in between. Add an occasional short interval session only after three or four weeks of strides.

Start strength small and start early. Three or four body-weight exercises, a couple of times a week, is enough. The guide on strength training for runners has the details.

Your first race

Pick the race by what you have already done. A 5K fits after about 8 to 9 weeks of training (Higdon's plan runs 8 weeks, the NHS Couch to 5K 9) and a 10K after about 13 (Galloway). A half marathon fits once you can run or run-walk 3 miles three or four times a week, and then it takes about 12 weeks (Higdon).

On race day, hold back. Run-walk at a conversational pace and let the day be about enjoying it. The guide on race-day pacing covers the first miles.

Making it stick

Decide the night before when you will run and lay out your clothes. Keep the week predictable so the run is not a daily decision, run with other people when you can, and do not wait for the perfect day to start or restart.

Give the habit two months before you judge it. In a 2024 review of 20 studies of health habits, the four that measured time to form a habit found medians of 59 to 66 days, with individual times from 4 to 335 days¹. Most of the studies had a high risk of bias and none was about running alone, so treat it as a guide to patience and not a deadline.