It doesn’t take millions to get fit: Go outside and enjoy running

Alex Kalinauckas

Alex Kalinauckas

The idea that it takes cash to improve your running is nonsense – any athletics coach worth their salt will tell you that to improve your 10km time – you spend two hours a week doing two-minute sprints or 1km efforts. To build your leg muscles, run up and down a hill. No hills nearby? Tie up your trainers and jog down to where there is one. Go mad and incorporate it into a longer session.

For years, running has been a place of stress release and exercise for those of us who refuse to pay exorbitant fees for gym memberships that we won’t use or end up spending more time in the café than on the treadmill. Alas, it seems the ultimate way to get fit for free has come under attack from the entrepreneurs.

Power bar, protein shake, heart rate monitor, stop watch, mirrored sunglasses – the list of kit to improve your running is endless, according to a new delivery start up aimed at athletes. Joggbox, a Shoreditch based company, is aiming to cash in on the boom in the running industry by providing boxes stuffed with gadgets and energy powder to improve your times.

I’ll admit a stopwatch will come in handy, but expensive power bars and suspicious powder do nothing a sensibly timed bowl of pasta and tuna won’t.

Leave the gadgets in the gym where they belong. Get out on the open road, enjoy the sunshine (if you can find it), feel the breeze and enjoy the burn.

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