A gentle step-by-step approach A Book to Get You Going
At long last an author who does not insist on hammering earnest how-to advice into you. Winni Mühlbauer, an advertising copywriter of 39, prefers to make recommendations in a casual and humorous tone. He clearly has fun doing so. Having discovered a love for running, he bubbles over with so much esprit it's bound to prove contagious.
Hey! Jogging is easy! is the first popularly written guide aiming especially to help those people who, being a little less sprightly than they once were, have not taken regular for some time, perhaps putting on a few unwanted pounds. The novice is gently introduced to long-distance running for fun and health, in readily digestible bites. Men and women who would truly like to run but do not know how to get started, will find this book a great help. As will all those men and women who always wanted to jog but never got past square one, or those who tried it but gave up too soon and think they're not cut out for it. The author, who fell into numerous traps in his early running days - "I spent a year messing about when I started" - and who today completes a marathon now and again, understands perfectly how to grab his reader's attention from the very first page, and how to make jogging immediately appealing.
"Here I am, smack in the middle of your snug corner. I'm afraid you're not getting rid of me too quickly either. In fact, we're keeping each other company for the next six months. Every now and again we'll go jogging together. Since an awful lot of people give up in frustration at the very outset, I'm going to concentrate on what it takes to get started.
In no time at all you're going to like running. You'll want to run often, I promise you. And soon you'll be enjoying benefits that have made hundreds of thousands of joggers delightfully happy. If, on the other hand, you're not going to be won over by the prospect of feeling much better physically, mentally more relaxed or quite a bit more self-confident, and if you're of the opinion that anyone who makes such propositions is more of a nuisance than a help, kindly place me back on the shelf."
Making their way through the book readers are constantly reassured of not being left out on a limb with questions they may have, of being in good hands and not exceeding their limits while jogging. As an experienced jogger, the author becomes a constant companion, dealing out praise, advice and motivation from one chapter to the next.
"To begin with I'll be leading you in small steps up to the 30 minute mark. Your boundless enthusiasm will no doubt make this an easy goal to reach, but be prepared to wipe a bit of sweat from your brow. The rewards are worth the effort. There's something special about that first half hour - only thirty minutes on the clock, but a peak moment in your life. By then you'll be able to run two to three miles at a stretch. Gradually you'll leave the novice stage, and within a couple of weeks thirty minutes of running will seem like kid's stuff. Why is this bound to happen? The answer is simple: in those few weeks your body will adjust itself to accommodate a thirty-minute workload of running. It is the ability of your heart and circulatory system to adapt to these first efforts that, in no time at all, makes running so simple."
Review - Part 2
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