Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

Impr
ov
e Y
our Englis
h: Englis
h in Ev
er
yda
y Life
72
and so, if you’re running for a couple of hours at a time, 
you can get through a fair amount of a book that way. 
And-and this way, I-I’m able to listen to books that, uh, I 
might not ordinarily have time to read outside of work.
Consistent running on a regular basis, uh, for a long 
period of time is the best-best training for a marathon. 
Um, it’s, running twenty-six miles and doing so with-
out dying is not something you can, you can just do on 
a whim, especially at my age. And so, um, good prepa-
ration for a marathon is running, uh, at least thirty-fi ve 
miles a week for at least ten or twelve weeks, uh, prior 
to the marathon. So I usually, uh, I usually have train-
ing runs, uh, do two or three training runs of somewhere 
between, uh, seven and ten miles a week, and then on 
the weekend, I do a long run of at least fi fteen. And, uh, 
so, if I am interested, if I have a target time and I wish to 
improve my time in a marathon, I will increase my train-
ing runs from, uh, from maybe to-to eight to twelve miles 
each and from three on average a week, to four, say, and 
then increase the length of my long runs on the weekend 
as well. But, uh, now that I’m, I’ve become a certain age, I 
also benefi t from cross-training: riding a stationary bike, 
uh, swimming a lot, uh, doing, undertaking other, uh, 
exercises, um, that, um, keep the rest of my body vigor-
ous, not just my legs but are also, uh, less of an impact on 
my body or less stressful for an-an aging body.
5. CLIMBING MOUNTAINS
INTERVIEWER:
So I know that you have a lot of outdoor 
activities. So talk about that.
WOMAN:
Well, about fi ve or six years ago, uh, I had a 
job where I had money so I could actually aff ord to buy 
camping equipment, and I became a member of REI, 

---