My name is James, and I’m a 27 year old Londoner. I’ve never been a big fan of sport and exercise, and spent most of my school days thinking up excuses to avoid PE lessons, or begging my parents to write me excuse notes. I was lucky enough to have a body that seemed to allow me to eat whatever I liked without any ill effects, so for most of my life the idea of doing any exercise, beyond the walking I did during everyday activities, never entered my mind.
However as I’ve gotten older my body has slowly become less tolerant of a diet of chocolate, cheese and wine, and so something had to change. Inspired by Charlie Brooker’s conversion I decided to give running a go using the Get Running app to coach me through the “Couch to 5k” programme. Starting out with runs of just one minute seemed like something even I could cope with, and so after a visit to Niketown to get kitted out I set out on to the streets of North London.
Much to the surprise of everyone I know, not least myself, I found I really enjoyed the runs (although calling the initial weeks of C25K “runs” is perhaps a slight exaggeration) – even to the point where I began to look forward to the next one. Indeed at the end of the third week I am already looking forward to completing the C25K programme and setting my sights on a slightly more ambitious challenge.
I’ve started this blog as a way to keep track of my training and perhaps help motivate me when the novelty inevitably wears off. All my runs are automatically added here from RunKeeper, so I’ve got no excuses and if I start getting lazy it will be impossible to hide. If anyone other than myself ends up reading this then I hope you enjoy it, or at least don’t find it too boring.