Jogging carries a wide range of physiological benefits. Some people's chief motivation is losing weight. Others want to have more supple and shapely legs; still others want to improve their cardiovascular health. But more than anything else, jogging is a way to build endurance --- the ability to carry on with physical activity for a longer time before becoming exhausted. Consult your doctor before beginning any new exercise regimen.
Effects on the Cardiovascular System
As Claire Kowalchik notes in "The Complete Book of Running for Women," jogging strengthens your heart, reduces your chances of suffering a blood clot, lowers your blood triglycerides and decreases your total cholesterol. At the same time, it raises levels of high-density lipoprotein --- commonly abbreviated HDL and often called "good" cholesterol. Higher jogging mileage is associated with increases in HDL, decreases in resting heart rate and a lower body-mass index. A lower resting heart rate implies that the heart is able to pump more blood with each beat and therefore needs to beat less often to pump the same amount of blood per unit of time. Daily jogging thus appears to be effective in both building endurance and improving overall health.
Effects on Muscle Endurance
Exercise physiologist and two-time Olympic marathoner Pete Pfitzinger explains that increasing the amount of jogging you do improves endurance at the muscular level in many ways. It allows you to store more glycogen in your muscles, trains your muscles to burn fat more efficiently, increases the number of blood vessels supplying muscle cells and increases the number of muscle-cell mitochondria, the tiny structures responsible for converting oxygen to fuel. Since the easiest way to increase your mileage is to jog every day, daily running is clearly better than sporadic jogging in boosting endurance.
Workload vs. Endurance
Within sane limits, the more jogging you do, the more endurance you will develop. Citing research by Dr. Timothy Noakes, "Running Times" magazine writer Matt Fitzgerald reports that jogging more increases both your running economy --- the amount of oxygen you use at a given jogging speed --- your oxygen-processing capacity. Pfitzinger points out, meanwhile, that the fastest distance runners in the world run more than 100 miles per week, lending clear support to the endurance benefits of daily jogging.
Words of Warning
While "the more you jog, the more endurance you'll have" is a valid claim, it is true only to a certain point. The biomechanical stresses resulting from hitting the ground some 1,500 times per mile jogged place a ceiling on how much you can run. This limit is different for everyone, but if you switch to daily jogging without a gradual buildup, you increase your risk of stress fractures and other overuse injuries. Consult a coach with your local running club for guidance about how to safely boost your jogging mileage.
References
- "The Complete Book of Running for Women"; Claire Kowalchik; 1999
- "New England Journal of Medicine"; High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol and Other Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease in Female Runners; Paul T. Williams, Ph.D.; May 16, 1996
- DistanceCoach.com; How High Should You Go?; Pete Pfitzinger, M.S.
- "Running Times" magazine; Rethinking Junk Miles; Matt Fitzgerald; October 2006
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