Jeremy Hogan | INstride Runners begin the YMCA 5k race last year.

Road races pop up like pansies in the spring, offering ample opportunities for rookie runners to become racers.

But if you’re planning to tackle your first 5K (3.1 miles, the most common distance for road races), or 10K (6.2 miles), veteran coaches have similar advice.

Rule No. 1: start slow.

Solid foundation

Do the smart things before taking your first steps.

If you haven’t done so already, visit a doctor to get the clearance to start a fitness routine. Running is a great, but fairly serious, exercise. It can be hard on the body.

Then visit a serious shoe store. A real runners’ shoe store, not the discount section at the big box place. Running store folks will watch you walk (or run) and recommend appropriate shoes for your gait. Try them on. Take them for a brief spin. Spend time choosing the right shoes for you. Knowing about and investing in the proper shoes now will save you a lot of pain — literally — later on.

Be patient

Bill Deckard and Mike Gilbert, both of Bedford, have decades of coaching experience behind them, and both have turned rookies into racers. And, while they recognize every person is different, the consistent advice is to be patient.

“Do some walking,” Deckard said. Once you’ve built up to where you can walk for, say, 30 minutes, then mix in running. “Run maybe a couple of minutes every five minutes.”

Beginners might start by exercising four days a week, he said. Once you’ve built yourself up to running three miles, you might want to add a fifth day.

By then, he said, you ought to be well on your way.

Gilbert has plenty of experience with rookies — he has coached middle school cross country for more than two decades. Generally speaking, middle school cross country races cover about two miles. But Gilbert is usually working with youngsters who have never run before.

“The main thing for me to do is to try to get them to give it at least two weeks,” Gilbert said. “It’s amazing how many want to quit that first day. But most of them, if they give it two weeks, they’ll stick with it.”

The main mistake, both said, is that people try to go too fast — and too far — too soon.

Gilbert tells the middle schoolers to jog until they’re uncomfortable, then walk until they’ve recovered enough to jog some more.

“We cover, like, two miles, but a lot of it is walking,” Gilbert said.

“The main thing I would suggest is not to overdo it or go too fast. It’s better to do less than overdo it.”

Keeping a comfortable pace is the secret. On a typical run — one not specifically designed to increase speed — you should be able to talk with your running partners. If you’re breathing so hard you can’t put a sentence together, you’re probably running too fast.

Get on schedule

If you’re looking to toe the line for, say, the Spring Running Fest in Bloomington or the Limestone 5K in Bedford, you’ll want to get on a schedule to make sure you’re in shape in time.

Depending on your goal, a training plan can be quite flexible or quite specific, setting out how far and how hard to run each day. And some training plans can be customized to fit your own real-life schedule.

Online resources, like www.runnersworld.com, offer a variety of training plans. You also can head to running centers — the Indiana Running Company in Bloomington, for example — to find more resources and advice. Running groups and clubs can be found in most central Indiana communities.

Gilbert has found that people, particularly beginners, run better in groups. Marathoner Kathy Hammel, who coaches the girls’ cross country team at Bedford North Lawrence High School, said it’s more difficult to skip a run when you have a partner on the road waiting for you.

If you’re naturally the competitive type, try to keep your eyes on your own work when you run. Your own progress is what matters, Hammel said, and it’s easy to get discouraged — or overconfident — if you compare yourself to other runners too much.

Write the run

Even beginners should keep a running log.

Various formats are available, including logs you can get from sources like Runners’ World magazine.

You can go high-tech. Many of the modern watches and GPS devices can log your run right into a computer, with a lot of bells and whistles on the side.

You can go low-tech. My running log is a hand-scribbled mess of a spreadsheet that I keep in my day planner.

And you can customize a log to fit your needs.

My log lists the day, date, my shoes, the weather, the type of run — easy, speedwork and some paces in between — as well as distance, time and pace. It also lists daily, weekly, monthly and career mileage. (I’ve run nearly 27,000 miles since 1990. Others have a lot more miles on their feet in that time span.)

I typically wear out a pair of shoes after 300 to 350 miles. My knees start feeling the pavemet before the shoe soles look really worn. That’s why I keep track of which shoes I wear on what runs.

Others keep track of fewer details in their logs. Others chart more, like morning weight and pulse rate.

Keep track of what makes sense to you, and change it as you learn more. But keep it. You’ll learn from it, and the simple act of recording your run will be a reward for all the sweat.

“A log can not only tell you what you did,” Deckard added. “It can tell you why you got hurt.”

A look at the log can show things — like a big increase in weekly mileage, or too many hard days in a row — that could lead to injury, he said. The idea is to notice those things and react appropriately before you get hurt.

Mike Lewis' running log