Today was day two of my Couch to 5K adventure. Actually it was day three, but the app gives you a day off between runs (walk/run/walks) to get over the delayed onset muscle soreness, usually referred to as DOMS. This is necessary.

It upped the ante today. Day one was a five minute brisk walk as a warm up followed by six run/walk intervals consisting of a sixty second run followed by a ninety second recovery walk. The programme ended with a five minute warm down walk and stretches. Today they slipped in an extra couple of intervals. Other than having to extend my loop in the park to accommodate the extra distance I didn’t notice much difference, which is probably the idea.

So far the programme has been pretty good. The only thing I would like to change is the female voice prompt, who tells me when to start and stop running, which is fine. She unfortunately also says things in what I think is a Californian motivational accent, like “Keep going awesome runner!!!”, “You’re doing grrreat!!!” and “You’ve reached the halfway point fantastic!!!!!”. For me, it would probably work better if they had recruited an ex-sergeant-major to say thing like “Get your a*se into gear start running”, “I suppose your doing a little bit better than last time, but not much” or “OK you can have a rest – WALK – don’t just stop you lazy sod”.  From my perspective much more motivational.

Evidence if required is available on Strava.