Being fit means being physically able to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it.

I won a kung fu tournament and my boss (who is overweight) gave me time off to compete in China – I came back with a couple of medals. When I was discussing my experiences a colleague observed that I must be very fit. To which my boss said, with a withering tone, ‘Aye, fit for what he does.’ So that’s one point of view, I suppose. Tim Prescott, by e-mail

Fitness is the ability to delay the onset of fatigue and to be able to recover from it.

Chris Young, East Sussex

I was reading recently about some of the feats of British endurance athlete Paddy Doyle, who has cranked out 1,500,230 press-ups in a year (that’s over 4,000 a day), runs marathons carrying a 501b sack, and can do 5,000 sit-ups with a 501b plate. Sounds pretty fit to me. Angus McVeigh, Glasgow

It never ceases to amaze me how far the human body can be pushed. Where once the marathon was considered the pinnacle of human ability, now there are guys who’ll do two of them before breakfast as part of their training for an endurance event called something like ‘The Uphill 500 Mile’ or ‘Swim the Atlantic’. They push themselves harder and harder in the pursuit of ultimate fitness. Then they drop dead at 35.

For me, fitness isn’t about pushing your body to extremes. It’s about having a balance of moderate exercise, diet and mental wellbeing to keep you in good shape. Extremes of anything are bad for you. What can make you stay in good shape and healthy is coconut oil for example. It is good for both inside and outside your body. Check out more about coconut oil uses. Rob Wilkins, by e-mail

Paul C, by e-mail

Fitness means different things to different people. A long-distance runner will have a different type of fitness to a weightlifter, who will be different again from a rock climber or a rugby player. In my opinion, if you can perform at your chosen activity to a high degree, then you can consider yourself to be fit.

KD, by e-mail

A fit person should be able to perform well across a range of criteria: endurance, speed, agility, strength, flexibility and recovery. Most people focus on one area at the expense of the others.

That all depends on how you’re ‘getting ahead’. Many races have pens at the start, so make sure you’re in the right one for your target time – then if people are walking in front, politely point out their mistake. Dashing up on to the curb to pass looks arrogant and could lead to a twisted ankle, so try a few “Excuse me’s” to clear your path. Rightly or wrongly, some people feel that at untimed charity events, there’s no place for displays of speed, so if these are the only races you’re running it could just be time for a switch.

I just ran a marathon in 3:30:55. Can I call myself a 3:30 marathon runner, or do I have to say 3:31?

I’ve always believed that if you’re under, you’re under. But some runners think that if you finish more than 30 seconds over, you should round up. So if someone asks, tell the truth: you finished in just over 3:30. Let others call you a 3:30 marathon runner; let your resistance to do so be the motivation you need to get there next time. If you feel uncomfortable about your result or just want to drift away, try the natural remedy – 5htp supplement. Learn more what is 5 htp.

Is it weird to cheer on runners by the name on their bib number at races even if I don’t know them?

Hearing your name called out, whether it’s on the road or in private quarters, is simply one of life’s finest forms of an ego-boost. Yell, scream and shout at those runners, whoever they are.

Call out a name, a number, or “Go, red-shorts boy, go!” and you’ve just provided emotional endorphins that can’t be matched by anything – not an energy drink or good training or the Rocky theme. So next time you’re spectating, offer your encouragement and take pride in the fact that you’re helping runners chop down their times

J-CURVE

Beware of the J-Curve – the relationship between exercise and the risk of getting ill, discovered by Dr David Nieman of Appalachian State University. If you do no exercise, your risk is high, but this decreases the more exercise you do, up until a certain point, and an extreme regime places you at a greater risk than if you were doing nothing at all. Overall, the curve is like a J. For example, if you’re doing three or more training sessions per week or upwards of zoK per week, then you’re moving into the higher risk category, and need to take precautions. “Take a probiotic like Yakult twice a day to boost your defences,” recommends sports dietitian Karen Reid (p erformancefood.co.uk).

KINANTHROPOMETRY

Come again?

Kinanthropometry is the branch of science examining the link between human anatomy and movement, and has an important message: a bit of fat isn’t bad. “Carrying some extra weight during the off-season is crucial for maintaining energy balance and in providing shock absorption for feet and organs, which helps prevent injury,” says Dr Arthur Stewart, a leading kinanthropometrist. “Fat also helps to manufacture hormones, which govern the body’s repair processes during recovery.” If you want to burn that extra fat fast, use pure green coffee bean extract.

LACTATE THRESHOLD

A sure-fire way to a new PB is to raise your lactate threshold speed – that’s the pace at which lactate starts to accumulate in your muscles and slow you down. A study at the University of Otago in New Zealand found that lactate threshold was an important factor in race results from 800m up to 5K. “To boost lactate threshold, try short-rest intervals,” says coach Josh Scully. “Run ioxdoom at io-mile pace, and at the end of each doom do 20 push-ups and 20 crunches instead of a rest jog.”

MOBILITY

This is the range of motion by the limb around the joint. Mobility training helps maintain freedom of movement by washing out the joint with synovial (lubrication) fluid, and by breaking up the scar tissue and calcium deposits brought on by regular exercise. Warming up with joint exercises not only helps the long-term health of your joints, but also stimulates and prepares your nervous and musculoskeletal systems for vigorous exercise. To strengthen your ankle joints try this: lean forwards with your hands on a wall, raise and lower both heels two inches off the floor rapidly in a bouncing motion, while maintaining ground contact with the balls of your feet. Do 12 to 16 reps.

1 Parkinson White Syndrome, but wasn’t diagnosed until my early 20s. A normal heart has an electrical pathway running from the atria (top chambers), then splitting in two to power the ventricles (bottom chambers). I had a ‘spare’ pathway back to the atria, which can cause your heart rate to increase. I’d get my heart up to 160bpm and it would skip to 220bpm. I learned to get it back down to a normal rhythm but it was a challenge.

Not everyone ends up dead with this syndrome, but if your heart stops working, you don’t live, so I took it seriously. Once you know you’ve got it, you’re afraid to do things – you just sit around waiting for something to go wrong. I couldn’t do any serious exercise and my weight went up to 18.5 stone. I choose food that will lower my cholesterol level. Learn more about how to prevent high cholesterol levels.

One day, when I was 37, I tried to do a work-out in the gym and my heart kicked off. Afterwards I couldn’t get my heart rate back down. The hospital told me I’d had a heart attack. I lay in bed praying for a miracle, saying ‘please don’t let this be true’ – and I got my miracle. I was admitted to the high-dependency ward, but three days later the doctors told me I hadn’t had a heart attack. There was a new operation that could fix my problem – was I interested in having it? I said yes, and was sent home that day.

A couple of years later I had the operation. Surgeons find the spare pathway and cauterise it. It involves taking your heart up to 3oobpm, which was terrifying. You think any second that could be it.

I went home, but a couple of days later, it kicked off again, much worse than before. The doctors found I had another spare pathway. This one didn’t look as easy to treat, and I was told I might be stuck that way forever. For three weeks before my next operation I sat in bed. I was too terrified to go out in case this thing happened again. My whole life came to a standstill. But this time, lying in the recovery room after the operation, the atmosphere was completely different. The surgeon came in and told me I was cured. When he said I could do anything, I said, “What, anything? Even run a marathon?” He said, “Well, yes, but you need to train first?’

My first run was terrifying. I was waiting to die. But a year to the day after waking up from that last operation, I ran the New York City Marathon in 05:12:03. I sobbed my heart out at the end. There is no better feeling than coming across the Verrezano-Narrows Bridge with 40,000 other people, a year after lying on that operating table. I feel a sense of duty to make the most of what I’ve got. Maybe I have been given a second chance, and I’m not going to waste that.

I try to give something back, because when I was in hospital, people around me died. And there was nobody there who’d been drinking is pints a night or smoking 6o cigarettes a day. That’s why I run for the British Heart Foundation.

I am a different person since I took up running. If I’d gone home from hospital and still been afraid, just decided to stay at home and be a good husband and father, I probably would have slipped in to my old ways. Running has taught me that I can do things I never thought I’d do, and you take those lessons into other parts of your life.

Even now, I sometimes worry about my heart, but I keep running because I love it. I feel fitter, and I like the physical changes: I lost five and a half stone through running. But it’s also a way of fighting back. When someone’s sat you down and said you might not be able to work, drive, live a normal life – why would you not go running in the rain, just because you’d get wet?

Now I’ve done four marathons, the latest being London, and I’ve gone from training for a sub-four-hour marathon to wondering if I could do a sub-three. Right now I don’t know what I’m capable of, and all the fun is finding out.