Matt Gets Running

Today, I start running.

Obvi­ously, I’ve run in the past. At some point. But this will be the first time since school that I’ve run for the sake of run­ning, rather than run­ning for a bus, or run­ning as part of some other exercise.

The closest I’ve come in recent years would be the jog­ging warm-up at my old kar­ate club. And since I quit kar­ate, a few years ago now, I don’t think I’ve run at all, for any reason.

Which might explain why I’m so lardy and unfit right now. I’m def­in­itely the heav­iest I’ve been in some years, and fairly unfit, too. I’ve not done reg­u­lar exer­cise, apart from walk­ing to work, in months.

And I feel pretty ter­rible, and I think my health is suf­fer­ing because of my lack of exer­cise, and I feel like I have to do some­thing to lose some weight, and I don’t want to starve myself on a diet. I kept the weight off fairly well when I was exer­cising regularly.

So, when my friend Ben asked me to knock up a web­site for his new iPhone applic­a­tion, Get Run­ning, it felt a bit like a mes­sage from the uni­verse. “Get run­ning,” the uni­verse was say­ing to me. “Get off your arse.”

And here I am. Ben’s given me a copy of his iPhone app, which is based on the “Couch to 5K” plan. It gradu­ally builds you up from a nice gentle start, altern­at­ing run­ning and walk­ing, right up to run­ning for a whole half hour, or about 5K.

Which was another hint I got from the uni­verse recently. I told my upstairs neigh­bour, Sian, that I was think­ing of doing this, and she (as  a much fit­ter per­son, and an occa­sional run­ner) poin­ted out that the run around Bristol’s har­bourside, which is right on my door­step, is pretty much 5K.

So, I guess I’ve got a tar­get, a way of meas­ur­ing my suc­cess, and a way to get there.

And, to help with my motiv­a­tion, and to track my pro­gress with some words, I figured I’d start blog­ging about it, too.

I’ve post­poned my start a bit — mostly because it was abso­lutely chuck­ing it down with rain on Sunday. I’m not sure I feel ready now, but you have to start at some point, and if I waited until I felt ready, I’d prob­ably still be wait­ing in 2017. And it looks like a nice sunny day, at the moment.

So, today, I start run­ning. Or at least some gentle jog­ging, inter­spersed with some walk­ing to recover.

I hope.

If you see another entry on this blog, you’ll know for sure