What could be a better goal than to complete a 5k this summer for charity?

Entries are still available for the Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life series this June and July. Whether you want to walk for fun alongside girlfriends and family members, or get competitive with your work colleagues, you can improve your own health and fitness whilst also helping to raise money for Cancer Research UK, whose work has saved millions of lives in the UK and across the world.

5k is an achievable distance for most people and women are being encouraged to come together to walk, jog or run to help raise over £60 million to fund Cancer Research UK’s life-saving work into all types of cancer. 5k is also a good distance to attempt if you are beginning starting a fitness program and with a little bit of training through the summer you may be ready for one of Cancer Research UK’s Run 10k events that occur in the Autumn, when the men in your life can also enter.

Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life continues to be the most successful and largest women-only fundraising event series across the UK and has raised a staggering £290 million for the charity’s life-saving research. The 2009 series was the biggest yet with over 730,000 women taking part. This year is Race for Life’s 16^th Birthday and since it began there has been a 15% drop in the death rate from cancer, something that Race for Life has helped to achieve.

If you are looking for something to wear during the event then visit the online shop, where you can buy your fancy dress accessories including fairy wings, bunny ears and pink glitter cowboy hats. If you want to show your support in other more subtle ways there are also socks, sweatbands, caps and key-rings as well as essential T-shirts. These include the new Race for Life 2010 celebrity T-shirts designed by choreographer, Arlene Phillips; girlfriend of Arsenal star Theo Walcott, Melanie Slade; and fashion designer Tracey Boyd.

This year there are over 230 Race for Life events throughout England, Scotland and Wales.  Women from across the UK of all ages and abilities aged are invited to enter, whether you are a cancer survivor, want to test your fitness, celebrate or remember a loved or simply do something positive to raise money for a great cause. Entry fee is only £12.99, although participants are encouraged to also get sponsorship and help is available to set up on an on line fund-raising page. Enter by clicking on the banner below or visiting www.Raceforlife.org.

Whilst exercise while young positively affects peak bone mass, exercise during adulthood can maintain bone mass and can potentially prevent women from osteoporosis.

In particular, impact exercise that induces high strains at high rates in the bone has been found to promote bone strength.

Research published in November’s BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, studied how bone changes over time during a 12 month course of exercise.

The aim was to evaluate the association between exercise intensity at 3, 6 and 12 month intervals and changes  in the Bone Mineral Density (BMD) of the femur (thigh bone), during high-impact exercise in premenopausal women.

• The subjects were 35 healthy women (age 35-40 years, average BMI of 25.5). Before the study began they were not participating in impact-type exercises or long-distance running more than three times a week.
• Accelerometers, (portable, cheap, light-weight machines, worn on the waist) were used to continuously measure daily physical activity.
• The subjects were supervised during a 60-minute training workout, consisting of a warm-up period, high-impact training and a cool-down period. The progressive high-impact period included versatile movements, such as step aerobic patterns, stamping, jumping, and running, three times a week for 12 months.
• The programs were modified bimonthly to become progressively more demanding by including higher jumps and drops.
• The participants were also given a home program (10 min daily), which consisted of patterns of exercise similar to those in the supervised sessions.
• The BMD of the femur, and the trochanters (the projections from the femur where the hip and thigh muscles attach), were measured using x-ray absorptiometry and activity data was correlated with changes in bone density.

The researchers from Finland found that the average daily number of high impacts during six months of training was significantly associated with 12-month positive BMD changes at the femoral neck and trochanter area.

These results agreed with many previous studies, in which only five to six months of high-impact exercise were needed to increase BMD in the femoral neck and trochanter and the greatest changes were seen on this time period, than during 12 or 18month interventions.

Lead author Riikka Ahola, suggests these results provide new information for designing optimal and feasible training programs that can prevent bone loss in premenopausal women

Because bone cells adapt to regular loading, one important feature that the researchers recommend is for an exercise program to be progressive. ‘A progressive exercise program sustains overload and the bone adaptation process. ‘

‘Loads should be increased with time to produce a sufficient stimulus. An exercise program that maintains the same loading for many years would stimulate bone formation only during the first months of training.’