Review - Zombies, Run! 5K Training

On Sunday the 8^th of September I did it, I finished the last mission on the Zombies, Run! 5K training app, and I know a 5K to most is not a huge distance, but I couldn’t be prouder of myself.

For those of you who don’ know what the Zombie 5K training app, it is like a typical 8 week couch to 5k training style app, but with the addition of a zombie story line.

You take the role of runner number 5, who is training to be a runner (someone who fetches supplies from the fields) for Abel, one of the surviving towns of the zombie apocalypse, but things aren’t always as smooth as they seem, not only are you up against the zombies, it seems that there is a bit of foul play within the camp.

The story is told to you through a variety of different characters, all with great voice actors, played at regular intervals over your music, but it’s not constant throughout the whole run. The story definitely adds more interest to the run and I found it quite motivating at getting me out the house as I wanted to hear the next part of the story.

As for the training itself, I much prefer it to the very popular C25K app I have tried previously. C25k has you go from running 8 minutes nonstop one week, to 20 minutes nonstop the next week. I know a lot of people have had a huge success with C25K but I found that jump very difficult, I couldn’t do it and was very discouraged from running again, where as the progression in Zombie 5K felt very natural and although each week was a challenge, I didn’t ever feel like I couldn’t do it.
The training is also a little more varied and will have you doing squats, heel raises and skipping halfway through the runs to help strengthen your legs, I may have felt a bit like a idiot squatting in the middle of the forest hoping no dog walkers passed by, but I definitely felt the benefits and it kept me on my toes!

I could not recommend this app more to new runners. It is fun, the progress feels natural and it is rewarding. After seeing me come home so happy after running my mum has actually downloaded the app and started it without telling me and is also enjoying it, my mum who is a bit overweight and hasn’t done any exercise since she was 21 is up and out running with our dog! If that doesn’t show that it’s for everyone, including complete beginners I don’t know what else will.

One tiny niggle is that the final mission, where you run 5k doesn’t actually tell you when you have run the 5k, it’s just a timed mission so I ended up running 7.5km in 51 minutes, which I was quite happy with, but I would’ve liked to have prompts letting me know the distance I had run/had left.

You can also track your progress via Zombie Link on your computer. It is a site that stores all your runs, including pace, time and distance, as well as a map of your run.

All of this for £1.99 making this, in my opinion, the perfect beginners running training app.