#oneaday Day 756: Emi’s Inspiration

Bettering yourself is a difficult thing to do. First of all, you have to really want to change, which isn’t necessarily the same as not liking something about yourself. It’s the difference between self-pitying cries of “I hate that I’m like this!” and inspirational yells of “I may be like this now, but you better watch out, cause I’ma kick your ass!” or something equally obnoxious.

There are lots of ways you might want to change yourself. It could be eating better, working on a new creative project, getting more exercise. Chances are, there is something you would rather do better — probably even several things. Once you’ve picked one, that’s where the challenge comes in — motivation to begin.

Inspiration can come from the strangest places. In this post back in 2009, I commented on the strange effect that changing my Second Life avatar from one which loosely looked like me to someone rather more buff an’ ting had on me. I suddenly felt inspired to better myself, and to attempt to hammer and chisel my flabby body into some sort of shape, to be more like my virtual self.

Well, I can’t say that it had a massive effect on me — I’m still overweight and would very much like to change that — but that initial push over the edge gave me some preliminary interest in fitness, and the knowledge that yes, I could do it if I applied myself.

Later on, I tried the Couch to 5K running programme, which takes 9 weeks to get you from wheezing, sweating mess up to someone who can run continuously for half an hour without stopping. It’s an excellent system, and one which has a very positive impact on anyone who tries it. But again, it can sometimes be difficult to get started.

One of the interesting things that those of us who have played Katawa Shoujo noticed was the inspirational effect that some of the characters had on members of the community. I’m not necessarily even talking in the “overcoming their disability” sense — rather, I’m referring to certain admirable character traits which a number of the girls in the game demonstrate to both protagonist Hisao and the player themselves proving to be a powerful motivational factor.

The most oft-cited example of this is Emi, an amputee girl and track star who describes herself as “The Fastest Thing on No Legs”. She overcame her disability to become a strong, fit runner, so why shouldn’t a person without a physical disability be able to do the same thing, too?

You can probably see where this is going.

What would happen, then, if you combined the infectiously cheerful, never-give-up personality of Emi with the well-paced Couch to 5K programme? Well, you get the following chart, which I include here after the break as a courtesy to that certain subset of you who have played Katawa Shoujo and are considering taking up running but having absolutely no idea where to start. Indeed, even those of you who haven’t played Katawa Shoujo but would like to be able to run for more than five seconds without HHNNNGGGGing can benefit from this. (To support the programme, I also recommend downloading this app for iPhone.)

As for me, I’m back into an almost-regular gym routine but haven’t done a long run for quite some time, so am planning on ploughing through the whole Couch to 5K programme again — with Emi’s help, of course — very soon. I shall be providing occasional progress updates on here when I can be bothered and/or when I don’t have anything interesting to write about that day.

Why don’t you get up off your arse and join me? See you on the track.

(Click Continue Reading if you’re on the front page to see Emi’s chart.)

Continue reading “#oneaday Day 756: Emi’s Inspiration” →

#oneaday, Day 280: Run, Jedi, Run

So I know you’re dying to know how my running is going. What’s that? You aren’t? Well tough luck, sonny, I’m going to tell you anyway.

For those of you joining me in this post… first of all, welcome HELLOTO YOUHUGSANDKISSES and secondly… I’ve been following the Couch 2 5K running programme for the last 5 weeks. This programme, originally recommended to me by the fine example of gentlemanhood that is Mr Calin Grajko, aims to get lazy bastards up and running a 5K in the space of nine weeks. It does this by doing a gradually-intensifying programme of walks and runs.

The programme starts with you running for 1 minute, then walking for 1.5 minutes, 8 times. The second week gets you running for 1.5 minutes, then walking for 2 minutes, 6 times. The third week has you alternating running 1.5 minutes and walking for 1.5 minutes, then running 3 minutes and walking 3 minutes, twice. The fourth week, which I’ve just completed, sees you alternating running 3 minutes and walking 1.5 minutes, then running 5 minutes and walking 2.5 minutes, twice. And this week, which I’ve just returned from the first run of, sees me running for 5 minutes and walking for 3 minutes, three times.

As you can see, the programme gradually increases in intensity a little bit at a time. It’s paced so well that if you stick with it, the actual relative difficulty of each week remains the same. So while you may be panting and wheezing after the first run of week 1, it’ll seem like a cakewalk by the time you’re running for 5 minute bursts in week 5. It’s excellent motivation because it lets you see exactly how much you’re improving. When I think back to the end of September, when I started, there’s no way I could have even contemplated running for 5 minutes at a time. Even the 1 minute runs of the first week were a daunting prospect. But now, a minute of running is child’s play.

This is partly due to improved stamina and partly due to you getting to know your body a bit better (in a non-masturbatory sense) and being aware of your limits. As you become aware of said limits, you learn to pace yourself effectively to be able to carry yourself through each zone of intense exercise.

And sure, I’m still slow as hell, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s giving me a workout and I can feel it having an effect. At the beginning of week 1, I was slow and incapable of running for more than a minute at a time. Now, at the beginning of week 5, I may still be slow, but I can keep it going for some time. Once the stamina is there, the speed can be worked on.

I have to say, the use of gadgetry to help with all this has been a key motivational factor. My iPhone comes with me on every run, along with the RunKeeper and Get Running apps. RunKeeper keeps track of your time, pace, distance and draws a handy map of your route. This will come in particularly handy once I’m trying to improve speed rather than stamina. In the meantime, it’s a means of drawing geographical penises across Google Maps.

Get Running is the key app, though, and I’ve mentioned it before on here, I know, but it’s worth talking about again. It’s a very simple app, being essentially a glorified stopwatch, but it’s put together so elegantly and produced so slickly that it’s an excellent aid to the inherent motivation of the Couch 2 5K programme. The recorded coaching is delivered with feeling and makes you feel like you have an actual trainer with you, encouraging you and spurring you on to the next milestone. It reminds you how far you’ve come since the beginning at the end of each session, tells you at just the right moment that you have “only a minute of running left” and so on. It’s a really excellent app and comes highly recommended to anyone interested in following the programme.

So that’s that. Exercise without an expensive gym membership to worry about. All it cost was the price of a simple iPhone app which, if you’ve got a stopwatch, you don’t even need. Plus it’s an excuse to get out and about and explore your area, which is a particularly pleasant thing to do out in the countryside.

So wish me luck in the next few weeks of the programme as I get ever-closer to the elusive 5K. It seems a long way off now but, given the progress I’ve made so far, it certainly seems to be within reach.

#oneaday, Day 259: Home Again

I prepared the above comic in advance just in case I was too knackered to do a proper one upon returning from London. And I am pretty knackered. But I managed to get my ass outside and go running tonight. At 9pm. In the dark. In a country village. At least I remembered to take a torch with me this time; less stumbling wildly into darkness and a little more Alan Wake. Though with less of whatever that game has in it (because I still, to my shame, haven’t played it yet. I KNOW, I KNOW, all right?) and a little more… well, just running. And walking.

I’m following the Couch to 5K programme (again… I started once before) that was originally introduced to me by the fine gentleman that is Mr Calin Grajko. Given that I’m presently in the middle of nowhere (well… the nearest gym is seven miles away) running seems like a safe, easy option to get some exercise without needing any 1) expense and 2) travel. The thing with gyms is, they’re cool and all, but if you’re already feeling lethargic and not wanting to leave the house, then travelling somewhere that is going to cause you to be grunting, breathless and possibly in pain is likely not high on your agenda. Unless you have a favourite hooker at that classy brothel you like so much.

But with running, yes you still have to leave your house, but you don’t have to go anywhere to get started. The world is your gym. And rather than staring at your sweaty, gasping self for half an hour in those mirrors that gyms insist on putting absolutely bloody everywhere, you can take in the scenery. You can take different routes for variety and challenges. You can run in the dark. You can run in the middle of the day. In the cold. In the warm. In the wet. And you can use fancy-pants iPhone gadgetry to analyse your runs in a level of detail that you really don’t need to. Or, possibly, attempt to run a route which lets you draw a giant cock on Google Maps. (I haven’t done this. But having just thought of it, now I think I pretty much have to.)

So far I’ve completed Week 2, Day 1 of the programme. This meant that tonight was the first time I was running for a bit longer, but also walking for a bit longer too. The pattern for this week is run for 90 seconds, walk for 2 minutes, 6 times. Last week it was run for 60 seconds, walk for 90 seconds, 8 times. This week sounded like it should be easier. It isn’t! Although as I’ve found previously with exercising, it’s actually surprisingly quick to build up a little bit of stamina. I’m obviously not at the stage where I could even think about running a 5k without collapsing dead yet, but I’ve noticed a marginal difference between how easy it is to keep going since the first day I started.

Just gotta keep it up! Fortunately, there’s a good iPhone app to keep the motivation up. It’s called Get Running and it’s really very simple; it’s basically a glorified timer with vocal feedback telling you when to start and stop running, walking and so forth. It also tracks how far you are through the programme and suggests which day you should do next, as well as allowing you to tweet your progress. The nice thing about the vocal feedback is that it’s recorded by a real person, which makes it infinitely more motivational than some robot going “You have… RUN… One. point? SIX! Miles.”

Anyway. I have a bed to get to very shortly. And then lots and lots of things to write in this coming week. Adieu.