Your own personal fitness when you start running will depend on a number of contributing factors: your age; your exercise history; whether you do an active or a sedentary job; whether you are a smoker or not.

How fit you are when you take up running need not make a difference to what you will be able to achieve on the road, but it will affect how easily your body adapts to the demands of a runner’s training schedule. Therefore, it can help you determine at which level to hurl yourself into training.

The most reliable method for finding out how fit you are, without leaving the comfort of your own home, is to measure your resting heart rate – that’s your heart rate while you are not, or have not recently been exerting yourself. If you haven’t got a heart-rate monitor, find the pulse in your radial artery by lightly resting your middle and index fingers at the base of your thumb, just below the wrist. The fitter you are, the lower your resting heart rate will be.

It is impossible to predict how fit you will become as you progress as a runner because everybody’s capacities will be different, and could vary as their situation changes. Suffice to say, as a runner you will be fitter than you were before you took up the sport.

As you train and your running improves, you should regularly take your resting heart rate and keep a record, in order to measure your fitness level as it increases. When you take your heart rate for your records, always do so at the same time of day because your heart will be working at different rates throughout an average day.