Today was the last run of week 2 of the Couch to 5k running plan. My running partner and I both found it relatively painless. Tiring, yes, but easier than earlier runs without a shadow of doubt. It’s another milestone as well, and takes us to a quarter of the way to our first 5k run at the beginning of week 9.

Weather was fine - sunny and no breeze to speak of (a shame - I like running with a bit of wind to keep me cool) - and shoes were fine too. I’ve noticed a marked difference between running on grass and on a tarmac surface, the latter being easier by far.

Things will be interesting next week. I am moving home this afternoon and over the weekend (I’ll be writing my posts but won’t be able to get them online until next week) and will be living too far from my current running partner to go running with her in the mornings. Having to meet someone at 6am has been a major help getting me to actually get up and run in the mornings - I hope that having started I (and she) will be able to carry on despite having to run separately. We shall see.

Week 2 continued in fine style today. No problem getting up - I was up well before my alarm, which was set for 5:30 for a 6am run, went off. Perhaps there is something to this exercise lark after all. I’ve certainly been feeling better than usual for the last few days, though that could easily be my imagination.

No rain today. Suits me! And a repeat of Monday’s run. Strangely, while the second run of week 1 was easier than the first, this run (the second of week 2) was harder than Monday’s run. Both myself and my running partner found today’s run tougher than Monday’s, which was confusing (but both finished the run as planned). We’ve both pretty much put the difference down to our bodies not recovering from Monday as much as we might have liked. If anyone has any idea of alternative reasons for this, I’d be happy to hear them!

If the same happens next week, I think we may have to leave an extra day after the first run of each week. We’re running Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the moment - maybe Monday, Thursday and Saturday would be better.

And once again, my ankles, shins and kness found the whole experience much better than previously. Decent running shoes really do make a huge difference!

Another wet day today - seems that’s par for the course for my Couch to 5k saga, and the first time we’ve experienced a week-on-week increase in the running. The last run of last week was relatively easy, actually - far better than the first run. Today, unsurprisingly, was significantly tougher, though it didn’t sound on paper as though it would be.

Today’s run was 20 minutes again (with a 5 minute walk for a warm-up, of course), split into 6 sections of 90 seconds running and 2 minutes walking (so technically 21 minutes total). The last 30 seconds of each run were taxing on the lungs and the legs, though playing an hour and a half of racketball yesterday probably didn’t help matters.

I felt better after the run today than I did after the first run of last week, which I suppose is a good thing. I don’t know if that bodes well for next week or not.

Today may have been the first real test for me and my running partner since we started the Couch to 5k Running Plan. Not in a physical way - the run today was much less demanding (I thought) than the previous two - but in a mental way.

I’ve sorted my bed out. Don’t worry, this is relevant. I snore. [”Stop! You’re off on a tangent” I hear you cry.] A cure for snoring (and this works - my wife is a big fan of this method) is to raise the head of the bed 4 to 6 inches. Unfortunately, doing so made our bed start squeaking far more than usual. As a result, I don’t think my wife or I have had a decent night’s sleep in months. A few days ago, we removed the books raising the head of the bed. I snore again but when we both get to sleep now we’re sleeping properly, and I can’t express how much of a difference it makes - it’s phenomenal.

Anyway, back to the story. On running days, my alarm is set for 5:30am. That gives me enough time to find clothes and stagger round the flat blindly to find enough change for a cup of tea at the end of the run. Today, I woke up (of my own volition) at 5am, feeling awake. That hasn’t happened for a while. So I got up and began my morning stagger.

When I noticed the weather. It was raining. Bordering on torrential. I just stood there for a few minutes, to really take in the weather, before going off to make myself a cup of tea. Several thoughts were running through my head. Would my running partner have seen the weather and just gone back to bed? Should I just go back to bed? Is it actually humanly possible to run in the rain? Is it sensible to run in the rain?

6am, as it usually does, turned up at the expected time and I decided to go out anyway. If I ran alone, so be it. This was the third run - the end of the first week, and no magic water falling from the sky was going to stop me finishing the first week! My thinking is that there are several key accomplishments in any plan like this, and achieving each just spurs you on to the next - and makes failure all the less acceptable. The first accomplishment was going out for the first run. The second is finishing the first week. And so on. The next will be finishing week 2.

I arrived at my running partner’s place and she was up and ready to go. So we ran in the rain. And hail. And high wind. We ran on the road, which hurt (I’ve still not sorted out my shoes, so my knees and shins really suffer if I run on road rather than grass). And we finished our first week on a high.

One week down, eight to go. It will get tricky in week three - I’m moving to the other side of Hove so will have to run alone in the mornings. It’s going to be harder to get up and go when someone isn’t expecting me at a certain time. I’m hoping that having done two weeks of the plan by then the move won’t be a problem, but we’ll see.

Like a chump I played squash again yesterday, and then went for another run this morning. 2nd run in week 1 of the Couch to 5k Running Plan. I have learned two things thus far:

1. Run With Another Person.
   Running is dull and you’re more likely to actually do it if you have arranged to meet someone else at a specific time.
2. Buy Decent Shoes.
   Mine are at least 11 years old and well worn. As a result, my knees are suffering today.

Actually, the shoes thing is really important. The difference it made when I picked up my squash shoes (right - Asics Gel Tactic Indoor Trainers) was phenomenal. I expect the same kind of improvement when I eventually sort out some decent running shoes.

This morning’s run was easier than Monday’s, for certain. I’ve not turned into Roger Bannister just yet - still wheezing my way along at a nice leisurely pace over a nice short distance - but any improvement is a good thing, and I’ve been more than once (which in my opinion takes this from “something a tried” to “fully fledged hobby”.

Tomorrow is a nice day of rest (was supposed to be squash but opponent is unable to make it), and then the third run of the week is Friday morning. I’m actually looking forward to it.

After a month of procrastinating, and almost entirely as a result of starting this blog, I put on some shorts and trainers and ventured outside to complete the first run of the Couch to 5k Running Plan.

So before anything else, I must apologise to anyone from Brighton & Hove who had the misfortune to see me out and running last night. My legs do not often see the light of day. As it happened, however, the light of day yesterday at around 9 to 9:30pm was more of a wet, very windy darkness. Perfect time to start - few witnesses.

I am something of a geek. I like coding. I like building websites. I like tshirts with coding and website jokes on. I get most of xkcd. I have a map of the internet. I wasn’t always this way, however. Back when I was younger I played a lot of sport. Fives and squash, every day. I was fit and healthy.

And then I left school and discovered beer and the art of sitting in front of a computer and working. My active lifestyle quickly gave way to hours in darkened rooms, nights on the tiles and a diet of … well, mostly bacon, pie and pizza, if I recall correctly. Not overly healthy. Surprisingly enough, I gained weight.

Soon, I shall post a photo here - a “before”, if you will, to be joined at some point by an “after”.

I gained the weight slowly. Very slowly. So slowly as to be virtually undetectable. I didn’t weigh myself, and rarely exercised, so didn’t really notice my fitness packing its bags and leaving. And then one day, not too long ago now, I realised that I was unhealthy. I had even picked up a smoking habit along the way somewhere.

In October last year, I stopped smoking. Phew. No more inhaling poison many times a day in the vain hope of satisfying an addiction that I grew to despise. Incidentally, if you are a smoker and say you enjoy it, I say “bollocks”. You’re full of crap and you know it. And the sooner you admit to yourself that you hate it, and that it’s killing you, the sooner you’ll be rid of the damn things and the easier you’ll find stopping.

Back to the subject at hand … after a few months of being smoke free, I decided to take the next step towards improving my health and start doing some exercise. It started with a few games of squash - 3 a week to be precise. While a step up from my previous exercise regime - which was primarily based on Red Alert and World of Warcraft - it’s not had the desired effect. I’m enjoying playing, and will continue to do so.

I decided to see if I could bring myself to do some running again. I ran for a few weeks in 2006, and that was fine, until knee pain forced me to stop for a couple of weeks and, well, that was that. One thing I had seriously missed in 2006 was a plan of some sort, and aims or goals. It’s all well and good saying “I’m going to run three times a week for half an hour”, but without a specific plan for how you’re going to run and what you want to achieve, you’re - sorry, I’m - just not likely to keep it up very long.

Which seems like a good time to outline my goals. I have several. Short term, I am to run 5k within the next two months and start a routine of doing so three times a week. Longer term, I am to run a half-marathon, and maybe cycle the London to Brighton bike ride next year. I am currently 220lbs (same as 2 Paris Hiltons. No, not the hotel, you sarcastic bastard), and I’m aiming for 196lbs to begin with (and we’ll see where I go from there). That’s all for now.

I’d like to do all of this doing things I enjoy, or can at least sustain. In a perfect world I could achieve all of this while eating waffles drenched in maple syrup and watching Blackadder. This is no perfect world, however. So the current plan involves eating better (and not eating late, which is a serious issue at the moment - my wife works late some evenings so we eat very late), playing squash and running, all of which I believe is sustainable.

Which pretty much brings us up to when I stumbled upon the Couch to 5K plan. It’s also about the same time I decided to start a blog dedicated to health and fitness for geeks.

The Couch to 5K plan is designed to help someone like me - lazy and unfit - to a level where they can run 5k (about 3 miles in real money) three times a week, in the space of about 2 months. 3 runs a week, of increasing “difficulty” (for want of a better word).

The first, which I have the pleasure of repeating twice this week, is a relatively simple one. Five minutes brisk walk to warm up, followed by a run for 60 seconds, then walking for 90 seconds. You repeat this 60 seconds on, 90 seconds off routine for 20 minutes. And that’s it! “Even I can do that”, thought I.

And this morning I managed to finish the first run - a fact I am actually quite proud of, despite it being of a level that should be considered very very easy. It was harder than I anticipated - I had thought that the squash would have had more of an impact. Or perhaps it did, and I was just starting from a worse position than I originally thought.

My initial thoughts are that 2 more runs will be fine this week. So far, so good. It’s a relatively small jump to next week’s runs as well, which is very encouraging - same warmup, but 90 seconds on, 120 seconds off, for 20 minutes.

I’m interested in tracking my progress, so for the next couple of weeks will be trying out some tracking programs and sites. If you have any suggestions or recommendations, please let me know.

I’m late to this particular party, but if you’re here, you might well be a geek looking to get fit. You could do much worse than start with this simple running plan.

Plenty of people - myself included - find one of the more difficult aspects of getting fit, especially when you’ve been stuck behind a desk for a few years, the lack of direction or a tangible plan. Without a plan or a specific goal (or set of goals), running (or cycling, swimming etc) can quickly become boring. From there it is a very short step to simply not bothering doing any exercise.

Having a weight or size based goal is a good thing, but that’s not likely to be an encouragement when you are starting.

Anything over around 2lb per week is bordering on unhealthy and an average person going running a few times a week can realistically expect a sustained loss of around 1lb a week. That’s good progress if you can keep it up - but it does mean that if your long term aim is to lose, for example, 3 stones, then you’re going to be looking at the best part of a year of work to reach your goal. Similarly, size-based goals are not necessarily an effective ongoing encouragement.

And this is where the Couch to 5k plan is a winner. Rather than getting you to focus on weight or size, it gets you to focus on fitness and exercise. Long term, the trick to staying in shape is to lead a moderately active lifestyle and eat a balanced diet - and this exercise plan fulfils the active lifestyle part of that.

Not only this, but the plan gives tangible results in a very short space of time - not in terms of weight or size (which both will improve with time) but in terms of fitness. In a matter of weeks, you could be running a mile several times a week - a significant achievement for many people.

Overall, this plan looks to be an excellent starting point for anyone who is just starting to do something about their health and fitness.