How to start running? And how to do it well!?

It seems that answer to the first question is very simple, however, it is not as easy as it seems.

At least not in my case.

At the moment when after almost 8 years of break I decided that I wanted to run again, my legs were already after a lot of experience. Three surgeries, reconstruction of the cruciate ligament in the left knee and broken ligament in the right knee did not fill me with optimism.

However, this time I decided not to give my right leg under treatment.
No matter what doctors say, I've had enough people that tell me what to do and what I can do.

I decided to take my life into my own hands! ... Well, to my own feets 😊

After writing my master's thesis in June 2017, I decided it was the best time to start running again. I had nothing to lose. I was even prepared for the worst, that after the first kilometers I would go to the hospital or something like that. Fortunately, nothing like this has happened.

At the beginning of July, about 7 in the morning, I went to my first running workout.

Yes ... I went, I did not run. I started very slowly, with small steps, as in the Slight Edge method. I found some training for very beginners and for the first month almost every day in the morning I got up and made a fartlek during which there was definitely more walking than running.

My workout looked something like this:
5 minutes walk + 1-minute run, repeat 6 times for example. Every couple days I was extended running time or make a shorter walk.

I was always thought that I was eating well and exercising a lot, so my form is not the worst.

I was wrong.

After the first days when I started to run about 5-10 minutes constantly, I thought something was wrong with me. I got breathless and felt pain in almost all my body. From ankles, through knees, hips to the lungs. It was new to me and, this has not changed for a long time.

After about 6 weeks of marching and running, my runs started to be a little bit longer. I knew that I was doing something wrong, but I could not feel what. Still, during the training, I felt knee or hip pain, which often persisted even throughout all day.
<h3<Soon after, everything began to change.
After a short vacation in Poland when I didn't run, I got a few books about running. From what I remember, the first one was probably Natural Running.
I heard something about it before but I had no clue what it was is really main idea of it. After reading this book, I was shocked and found that I need to start everything from scratch. This time I decided to focus on the technique of running and strengthening the muscles stabilizing the whole body and core strength.

One of the main principles of the new technique was running from forefoot, not from the heel as I have done so far.
From the first training, I felt a huge difference, knee and hip pain disappeared immediately. There were, of course, other muscle pains which were previously very much used, like my calves. But that only confirmed the theory that I run well and I have to start to feel these muscles.

In the first days of running in the mid-foot, I felt that running was something for me and...

I loved it!

Of course, there are many opponents and followers of different styles of running. I do not want to start any debate here on this subject. Both methods have some pros and cons!
However, I know one thing, running from the finger helped me incredibly and all the pains I felt during previous runs disappeared. I believe that learning this technique and spending some more time building the strength of stabilizing muscles was a great decision.