The first step might be the hardest but how much is your health worth?

Sunday marks a great festival of locomotion when some 80,000 souls pound the streets from Sydney to Bondi in what’s billed as the world’s largest fun run.

A good proportion of both runners and walkers are aged in the 50+ camp and their turnout underlines the sense of investing in your health as much as your wealth.

Many prioritise earning money over wellbeing and then maybe spend a fortune trying to regain fitness. Others may start on the back foot due to genetic, generational or other disadvantage.

But research shows time and again being inactive in the middle years, now vastly extended due to longer lives, knocks years of the gift of longevity.

The 19^th century US essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson put it economically. “The first wealth is health.” But we can’t pretend preserving health doesn’t involve some work.

New research out this week from the University of Queensland (UoQ) is even calling for a boost to the physical activity guidelines to reduce the risk of five common diseases.

They say a fivefold increase is needed to the current World Health Organisation recommendations of two to three hours running or brisk walking a week.

The choice is simple:  up to 20 hours a week of brisk walking or up to eight hours of running a week to cut the danger of breast and bowel cancer, stroke, heart disease and diabetes.

So if you can’t actually make the 14kms hilly course of the City2Surf what can the ordinary FiftyUp realistically do to increase both their longevity and with good health?

The first answer is to start something even if it’s a modest beginning.

The Queensland University study published in the British Medical Journal suggests being more active at work by sitting down less, using the stairs where possible and walking and cycling more.

“The trick is to incorporate physical activity into daily life, making it a habit rather than a chore,” says the UoQ researcher  Dr Lennert Veerman.

Government also has to do more in making urban and other environments more conducive to activity such as making walking and cycling safer and more convenient.

Technology can help. The fitness trackers and other wearable technology are very popular. If you register less than 5,000 steps a day you may be considered sedentary. The goal is at least 10,000 steps say the experts to start to accrue health benefits.

There are many sources of help of how to be fitter and joining in with others can certainly help share the effort.

It’s at least 15,000 steps from Sydney to Bondi but don’t be put off at least starting something as they say the first step in anything is always the hardest.

PS Below are the official Australian government physical activity guidelines

• Doing any physical activity is better than doing none. If you currently do no physical activity, start by doing some, and gradually build up to the recommended amount.
• Be active on most, preferably all, days every week.
• Accumulate 150 to 300 minutes (2 ½ to 5 hours) of moderate intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes (1 ¼ to 2 ½ hours) of vigorous intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both moderate and vigorous activities, each week.
• Do muscle strengthening activities on at least 2 days each week.