In a new four-part series, self-confessed couch potato Marie starts a new exercise regime in an effort to ditch her lazy habits, get fit and complete the Rainbow Run 5k at the end of June.
Week One: Getting Started
Hello, my name is Marie and until this week, I had never completed a run in my life.
I’ve always admired people who run but I’ve just never had the drive to throw on my runners and choose a jog when the alternative is a cuppa and a few episodes of Breaking Bad. On a few occasions, I have tried but usually lost interest after a few minutes due to a combination of terrible cardiovascular fitness and having the attention span of a particularly antagonised fly.
However, at the grand old age of 28, I have started to realise that exercise is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity so when the folks at Vodafone offered to sponsor me to take part in the Rainbow Run in aid of Dublin Simon Community, I decided it was time to get my ass off the couch and join the running bandwagon.
Armed with a Samsung Galaxy S5 (which, i’m told, is full of fancy fitness functions) and a date with trainer Alan at Flyefit on Baggot Street, I headed to the gym last Wednesday with a look of steely determination and a stomach full of butterflies. I threw myself into the session with gusto and was quite very pleased with myself until I awoke the following day feeling like I had spent the previous evening being kicked around the pitch by the Irish rugby team. First lesson learned: ease yourself into it!
After a few days of recovery, I decided to bite the bullet on Monday night and took to the streets of Stoneybatter for my first ever run. After struggling about five minutes in, I took some water, cranked up the tunes and settled into a slow rhythm. Before I knew it, I had completed three kilometres and arrived home a heaving, sweaty mess. At 19.09 for a 1.82 mile run, nobody is going to be mistaking me for Sonia O’Sullivan any time soon but I was absolutely delighted to have finally gotten a maiden voyage under my belt.
While at the gym, Alan talked me through some of the best exercise apps that are available and these are some of the ones that I’ve found great so far.
1) Spotify
If you’re anything like me, you probably cannot work out without a soundtrack and streaming service Spotify is great as it allows you to change up your music as often as you like, using playlists, albums or the shuffle function. While I started out with Survivor by Destiny’s Child, I found that I ended up racing along and running out of breath after five minutes. I later came across an album called Inspirational Music (Running Music), which consists of trance remixes that I would normally hate but I’ve found great to match my (quite slow) jogging rhythm.
2) Runkeeper
This is brilliant as it tracks the route, time and distance of your run, as well as giving you updates as you go, which I found to be great motivation (particularly as I was flagging towards the end!). It also lets you share your stats on social media, if you’re so inclined, but I think I’ll be keeping mine to myself for a while!
3) My Fitness Pal
A healthy diet goes hand in hand with training for a race and this handy app takes all the guesswork out of it. Enter your vital statistics and My Fitness Pal will calculate the calories and give you a breakdown of the nutritional content. It also allows you to scan barcodes on food packaging, making it quicker and easier to keep track of your diet, and can be synced with other apps to take into account your daily exercise.
4) S Health
While the other apps are available in the Google Play Store or iTunes, this one is pre-loaded on some Samsung handsets and I find the pedometer brilliant for measuring my daily activity. If you have a different phone, there are a lot of third-party apps that will do the same job.
All in all, my first week as a ‘runner’ has gone much better than expected and as the Rainbow Run sounds like a lot of fun (complete with colour bombs and 90s tunes at the finish line), I’m now actually looking forward to the event. I’ll admit that I had previously been quite apprehensive as I felt that ‘organised runs’ were for fitness fanatics who spent their weekends in the gym but I see now that 5K is definitely an achievable goal for even the most dedicated couch potato!
I think I’ve enlisted my two long-suffering flatmates into taking part with me and will be documenting my progress here over the next few weeks so if anybody else if taking part, feel free to say hi on Twitter at @Herdotie with the #CouchToRainbow5K hashtag.
Vodafone has all your training needs covered. You can get Samsung Galaxy S5 in black, white or gold on Vodafone Red bill pay and get a Gear Fit worth €199 at half price on selected plans, with Spotify Premium and extra data. Ready, steady, go! See http://www.vodafone.ie/offers/samsung or http://www.vodafone.ie/spotify for further details.
