It turns out that while the findings should remind anyone who’s pressed for time (so, all of us) that every little bit of exercise counts, the researchers didn’t track daily running times. What they actually found was that even people who ran for less than 51 minutes per week still enjoyed a 30% drop in all-cause mortality risk and lived an average of 3 years longer than people who didn’t run at all. Depending on how you break it up, that could be as little as 5 to 10 minutes of running a day. Or it could be 51 minutes one day a week, or 15-minute jog on Wednesday, and a 36-minute run on the weekend. Or any combination you can conjure. “No one goes out and runs for 5 minutes,” Timothy Church, MD, MPH, PhD, coauthor of the study and a professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, told MensHealth.com. “What these findings actually show is that there is a benefit to running less than 51 minutes a week.” Of course, running for even 60 seconds sounds daunting (okay, hellish) when you’re out of shape. But even if you’re overweight, plagued by sore knees, or move so glacier-slow that your neighbor’s 4-year-old is lapping you on her tricycle, it is possible. Janis Noone started at age 60, at a time when she felt like her body and health were falling apart; Chris Wookey, 44, began in the dead of a South Dakota winter, carrying 50 extra pounds; And when Bill and Debbie Gelber gave it a shot, they could only keep it up for 30 seconds a time—now, they’re running marathons. (Check out their amazing stories—and learn how they transformed their health and lost a combined total of 240 pounds—here.) You don’t even have to go fast to make an impact. The same study found that the health benefits didn’t really change regardless of how fast or how far the runners ran. It just mattered that they did it, period. Think you might want to give it a shot? We tapped our friends at Runner’s World for the ultimate Start Running Plan. It starts with walking, but in just 5 weeks you’ll be running with only minimal walking breaks. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find out what all of those crazy runners already know; that it’s actually fun.
