I’ve seen so many people in the recent months who have expressed interest in running, but never start.

Forget what shoes to buy, forget what fancy GPS devices you want to buy, forget about monitoring your heart rate, forget about tracking sites. You don’t need those to START RUNNING.

If you want to run, there are only 2 steps. First, go to HalHigdon.com and “Select your training”, select among the Novice, Intermediate, Advanced Charts. Second, religiously follow the chart you chose, don’t skip even a single run. That’s it.

Once you reach your target distance, THEN you can go for all those fancy stuff mentioned above.

There are two things that motivate me to get to regular running – first, is to have something to look forward to, so I end up doing good running only when there is a marathon to look forward to. Here are the list of marathons upcoming in the rest of 2010 that I could find online:

• 08 Aug 2010 – Gurgaon – Gurgaon Running-and-Living Half Marathon
• 29 Aug 2010 – Chennai – Chennai International GiveLife Charity Marathon
• 19 Sep 2010 – Bangalore – Kaveri Trail Marathon
• 03 Oct 2010 – Shimla – Shimla Running-and-Living Half Marathon
• 14 Nov 2010 – Bangalore – Bangalore Ultra Marathon
• 21 Nov 2010 (date not confirmed) – Delhi – Airtel Delhi Half Marathon
• 28 Nov 2010 – Hyderabad – Hyderabad Half Marathon

If I have missed any confirmed marathons, please let me know, I’ll add it to the list.

Second, make this a group activity and it’ll be more fun. I was able to sustain my interest in running purely because of great friends / training group two-in-one. Since I don’t have a group any more, I’ve joined the Runners High training, and in just a few weeks, I seem to be back already w.r.t. my running ways – 57 km in the month of June.

Run and Become!