A lot of small plump people like myself little hearts that go peeppeeppeeppeep instead of Th-Thump...Th-Thump...Th-Thump

Now I have discovered a strange thing.

Heart exercise (that fit people call VO2max) (which means puffing like crazy) is Cumulative.  That is, it adds up.

So if you do half a minute of jumping, then stop and have a cup of tea, then jump for another half minute - you heart responds as if you have jumped for a whole minute.

And if you jump for a half minute every hour for 6 hours - your heart gets the benefit of 3 solid minutes of jumping without the pain and strain of sweating and gasping and so on.

This is a huge workout for your heart but your legs it's hardly anything.

In fact it's so effective I've had to cut back because my heart has complained about too much too soon.

How then should we run?

Well here's what I've been doing.  I go for my wee run - slowly enough not to get puffed, far from the public eye, and then just at the end I do a wee sprint - only about 50 metres - as fast as fast.

You can put several of these tiny sprints in your runs if you like.

And what's the weird thing?

The weird thing is that it's really fun.  I've often heard about endomorfins or whatever they're called, that are supposed to give runners a druggy high - but I've never felt remotely high at any stage of my running.

But when I finish my run with a silly wee sprint - it makes me come back feeling like I've just had fun.  As if I'd had a great laugh.

I really recommend you try this thingy, and let me know how you get on.

Here's the website that I found this out at:
http://home.hia.no/~stephens/exphys.htm