Looking through some old running magazines a few nights ago, I stumbled across an article entitled "The 100 Steps to Fitness" first published in Running Magazine back in June 1993. It was written by Bruce Tulloh, who won the 1962 European 5,000m gold medal and who I believe is still running competitively today.

The challenge imposed by the article really caught my attention at the time - in fact, I became obsessed with achieving the 100th step (which I eventually managed after several failed attempts, at the old Great Western Runners Pucklechurch 10 mile race back in 1996).

The article identifies 100 running targets (steps), each increasing in difficulty commencing with a 20-minute one-mile walk, and concluding with a significantly more challenging 10 miles in an hour. Steps 1-15 cater for the complete beginner, and should take the average novice runner approximately 12 weeks to complete based on exercising three times a week.

Steps 16-35 build on this basic level of fitness and over the course of the next 8-12 weeks should enable a non-athlete training 4 times a week to have reached a reasonable level of fitness. Step 36 and upwards provide a means of further improvement, as far as an individual's age and ability will allow. Starting from scratch, it would typically take a young man a year to get to step 100, although many runners will never reach this level, despite training hard.

The 100 Steps to Fitness certainly caught my imagination when I first read it, acting as a stimulus for improving and measuring my running performance over the next year or so. Back in the days prior to GPS watches, it was obviously far more difficult to measure an accurate distance over which to run against the clock, whereas nowadays it should be fairly easy to build an accurate picture of how you're progressing against each step.

Take a look - but beware - you could become as addicted as I became!