Experts say best form of recovery will be to stay active, process traumas and set healthy targets

Most people would consider running a marathon the pinnacle of fitness – but not Russ Cook. The endurance athlete has just completed a 9,940-mile (16,000km) run along the entire length of Africa.

While Cook told reporters that he was a “little bit tired” and in need of a strawberry daiquiri after completing his odyssey, scientists who spoke to the Guardian suggested the road to recovery could be rockier than he anticipates.

Being more flexible than the average person can have its advantages, from being great at games such as Limbo to feeling smug in yoga class.

But researchers are coming to understand that being hypermobile can also be linked to pain in later life, anxiety, and even long Covid.

Madeleine Finlay hears from the science correspondent Linda Geddes about her experience of hypermobility, and finds out what might be behind its link to mental and physical health

Read Linda Geddes’ article on hypermobility here

When Sian Davies was waiting for spinal surgery, she stayed sane by planning things to look forward to. Most notably, an extraordinary feat of endurance

When she was 61, Sian Davies decided to row across the Atlantic Ocean. In March 2021, the retired sports and leisure manager was one of 12 crew members who set out on the 3,000-mile journey from Tenerife to battle sun, salt and fierce currents. “We would row in three-hour shifts and only sleep for an hour or so every six hours,” she says. “For the first 15 days I was seasick, so I didn’t eat a thing – I was just rowing and collapsing. I went through some pretty dark times.”

But she didn’t give up, and after 42 days on the water, she reached Antigua to become one of only six women in the world over the age of 60 to have rowed across an ocean. “I was exhausted and I was also so proud of myself,” she says. “It was empowering to push the limits at my age and find out just how much I could do.”

This is the perfect time to make lasting changes – whether embracing exercise, learning a new language, planting seeds or painting your house

Take it from a hopeless dopamine addict, spring is inarguably the best season to get into outdoor exercise. The trick to building the habit – as with any habit, really – is to start small, and reduce friction. Decide what you’re wearing and charge your phone before you go to bed. For your first few sorties, don’t worry about distance, speed or doing a whole workout: just get yourself used to getting up and out of the door. Counterintuitively, it can help to not dress like an athlete: if you go out covered in Lycra, it can feel mortifying to slow to a walk, but if you’re less formally dressed you can stop for a coffee. Keep it playful, and enjoy what your body can do: if that’s some step-ups on a bench or pull-ups on a tree branch, great, but even if it’s just going a little bit faster when a good song kicks in, the endorphin rush is what you’ll remember the next time it’s wet and windy. Oh, and don’t underestimate the value of a well-curated playlist. Many’s the morning I haven’t wanted to go anywhere, only for this Rihanna/Game Of Thrones remix to put a spring back in my step. Joel Snape, fitness writer

What happened when a lifestyle influencer started eating what she liked?

Lee Tilghman entered the online world in the early 2010s, with a healthy food blog she had started in college. Influencing was just becoming a thing. When she moved to Instagram, with the rest of her generation, in 2014, and featured one of her smoothie bowls, she gained 20,000 followers overnight. “Brands began reaching out to send me products,” she remembers now.

Two years later, she quit her nine-to-five and moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles. Within a year, she gained another 100,000 followers, an agency and manager. “I was earning upwards of $15,000 a post and working with major food and lifestyle brands who’d sell out of whatever I posted about.”

What happened when a bodybuilding influencer changed tack?

When you’re making any kind of change, it’s messy and uncertain; making mistakes with a large audience is trickier,” says Sophie Aris of her switch away from online bodybuilding and fitness. When the now 36-year-old joined the early cohort of fitness influencers posting about weightlifting and nutrition in 2015, she was working as a secondary school art teacher and had got into gym culture through an ex-boyfriend.

She posted morning and night. “I used to pull up at the school car park, in Oldham, at 7.30am with my gym selfie or picture of my Tupperware meals ready to post,” she says. Within a year, she had more than 100,000 followers on Instagram, weighed seven stone (44kg) and was a competitor in the bikini category of British and European bodybuilding competitions, winning gold.

This homespun documentary highlights Gaddings Dam, where intrepid wild swimmers visit in all weathers

Here’s a gentle and rather lovely documentary about the community of wild swimmers who dip all year round at Gaddings Dam on the West Yorkshire moors . A beautiful spot, the dam is England’s highest beach – though it’s unlikely to be winning any awards for the sunniest. Not that lashing rain, storm-force winds or thick ice put off the hardy year-round dippers. They’re a jolly bunch – slightly bonkers, which is meant kindly. Most don’t do wetsuits; when the water temperature drops, on go the woolly hats, gloves and booties to protect extremities.

The dam is a mill pond built in the 1830s; about 20 years ago, under threat of being drained, it was rescued by a group of enthusiastic locals. Veteran dipper Clive, now in his late 60s, says he racks up 500 or 600 dips a year. The film’s director Ben Davis interviews other swimmers: among them members of the Saturday Morning Crew and the January Daily Dippers, who swim every day in January to raise money for charity. Some swim for fitness or to connect with nature; others to improve their mental health. One woman started wild swimming to deal with menopause symptoms. They might be hardcore, but the swimmers interviewed here are generous about the fair-weather paddlers who pack out Gaddings come a heatwave. Less tolerant is the pub landlord with the closest car park to the dam; it’s rammed in summertime. “They don’t respect yellow lines,” complains a local.

Can a late convert to wellbeing undo decades of beer and barbecues? In the first of a new series, Phil Daoust has a health MOT – and gets some worrying news about his heart

I am sitting in a consulting room, talking through the results of an unusually thorough health check. The doctor seems happy with most of them, but he lingers on the squiggly lines of my ECG – a chart of the electrical signals in my heart. He’s found something called a “prolonged PR interval”. I’m very happily married to a PR, so this sounds quite pleasant, but then he explains that P and R are points on the squiggly lines, and that I probably have “first-degree heart block”. I feel a little chill.

I guess these are the risks when you try to find out more about your health. But ignorance doesn’t feel like bliss when you turn 60. How much longer have I got, you want to know. How much of that will be fit and happy? And OK, I’m now getting free prescriptions, which is nice, but is that because I’ll be needing more medicine?

Why do people put themselves through ultra-long distance swims, runs and cycle rides? Plus our guide to the top ultra sports events worldwide

Have you noticed everyone’s cycling across Europe lately, or running over the Alps, or skiing to the south pole? Where once just a few mad explorers pushed themselves to these limits, now amateur sport is turning into a feat of ultra-endurance, from 4,000km bike rides to 100 mile runs. But … why?

“There are specific aspects to physical challenges like this,” says Dr Carla Meijen, a sport and exercise psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam. “They offer a mix of endorphins, feeling fitter and observing progress”.