Yours,

Li Hua

5 . Improving as a runner is about more than just running all of the time. You need to pay a little attention to details and make a smart training plan.     1    , no matter what your sport, race, or running habits.

Alternate easy and hard runs to build strength rapidly. It is common for runners to push themselves about the same amount each time and gradually increasing difficulty.     2    . It is during these difficult runs, when you really push yourself, that your body snakes the most significant gains. Don’t feel like an easy day is “cheating”. Rather, it is helping rebuild and relax the muscles needed for your big runs.

    3    . You want to keep your chin (下巴) up and your shoulders back, with loose, relaxed arm and hand muscles. Your elbows are bent at 90 degrees but swing freely. If anything, the only muscles you want to focus on keeping strong and tight are the ones in your core (核心). That’s because this will naturally help you efficiently channel energy.

    4    . A higher body temperature ensures your muscles are loose and flexible, and your body is pumping blood effectively throughout. For everything other than easy runs, use the first five to ten minutes to build a light sweat and get your body ready for exercise. Even five minutes of walking is a good way to get started. Slowly pick up speed for short 10 second runs, and then return to normal warm-up pace.     5    .

A new football competition, Man V Fat,     1     (organize) recently in England. Judging from the name,     2     is easy to guess that players can only join if they are fat. They can only win when they lose     3     (pound) after each game. So, the aim of this competition is     4     (get) fat men to do exercise always.

Jay Ali, a bank manager, found it a perfect idea. He said, “I don’t want to go to weight-loss classes     5     almost all participants are women there. And I don’t want to play football with my friends who are all     6     (thin) than me, so this gives me the perfect opportunity to exercise with guys who are the same     7     me. Here, no one judges me, so I don’t have to get     8     (embarrass).” Mr Shanahan from Staffordshire shared the same opinion, “I took part in the competition after getting fed up with (受够) the weight-loss classes which were     9     (main) filled with women.”

It seems that this football competition has offered fat men     10     amazing way to lose weight.

9 . Race walking shares many fitness benefits with running, research shows, while most likely contributing to fewer injuries. It does, however, have its own problem.

Race walkers are conditioned athletes. The longest track and field event at the Summer Olympics is the 50-kilometre race walk, which is about five miles longer than the marathon. But the sport’s rules require that a race walker’s knees stay straight through most of the leg swing and one foot remain in contact with the ground at all times. It’s this strange form that makes race walking such an attractive activity, however, says Jaclyn Norberg, an assistant professor of exercise science at Salem State University.

Like running, race walking is physically demanding, she says. According to most calculations, race walkers moving at a pace of six miles per hour would burn about 800 calories (卡路里) per hour, which is approximately twice as many as they would burn walking, although fewer than running, which would probably burn about 1,000 or more calories per hour.

However, race walking does not pound the body as much as running does, Dr Norberg says. According to her research, runners hit the ground with as much as four times their body weight per step, while race walkers, who do not leave the ground, create only about 1.4 times their body weight with each step.

As a result, she says, some of the injuries associated with running, such as runner’s knee, are uncommon among race walkers. But the sport’s strange form does place considerable stress on the ankles and hips, so people with a history of such injuries might want to be cautious in adopting the sport. In fact, anyone wishing to try race walking should probably first consult a coach or experienced racer to learn proper technique, she says. It takes some practice.

10 . Running is often tiring and a lot of hard work, but nothing beats the feeling you get after finishing a long workout around the track.

But while it’s long been believed that endorphins (内啡肽) —chemicals in the body that cause happiness—are behind the so-called “runner’s high”, a study suggested that there may be more to this phenomenon than we previously knew.

According to a recent study published by a group of scientists from several German universities, a group of chemicals called endocannabinoids (内源性大麻素) may actually be responsible for this familiar great feeling.

To test this theory, the scientists turned to mice. Both mice and humans release high levels of endorphins and endocannabinoids after exercise. After exercising on running wheels, the mice seemed happy and relaxed and displayed no signs of anxiety. But after being given a drug to block their endorphins, the mice’s behavior didn’t seem to change. However, when their endocannabinoids were blocked with a different drug, their runners’ high symptoms seemed to fade.

“The long-held notion of endorphins being responsible for the runner’s high is false. Endorphins are effective pain relievers, but only when it comes to the pain in your body and muscles you feel after working out,” Patrick Lucas Austin wrote on science blog Lifchacker.

Similar studies are yet to be carried out on humans, but it’s already known that exercise is a highly effective way to get rid of stress or anxiety. The UK’s National Health Service even prescribes (开药 方) exercise to patients who are suffering from depression. “Being depressed can leave you feeling low in energy, which might put you off being more active. Regular exercise can improve your mood if you have depression, and its especially useful for people with mild to moderate (中等的) depression,” it wrote on its website.

It seems like nothing can beat that feeling we get after a good workout, even if we don’t fully understand where it comes from. At least if we’re feeling down, we know that all we have to do is to put on our running shoes.