Photo by João Cabral on Pexels
Spring days where the mornings and evenings are cool and the sun is shining brightly are the perfect days to restart your running journey.
I have never been a huge runner. Mostly I walk to get my daily exercise in. I’ve written previously about how all you need is 11 minutes of walking each day to stay healthy. I generally try to get 25 to 30 minutes of walking in each day, along with about 10 minutes of yoga. But sometimes I start to feel sluggish even with my daily walks.
On those days, I think about getting my jogging routine started again. I’m not a fast runner, and usually I listen to music or podcasts when I walk. This time around, I decided to restart one of my favorite running apps, Zombies, Run! It is such an entertaining app that I will often be done with my 20-minute run before I even know it.
It’s a narrative-driven app that has you running missions for a compound that has survived a zombie apocalypse. You’ll hear instructions as you run, and depending on how you sync the app to your phone, it will track your run maps, run time, and progress. You can pick up supplies as you run, and you can even set up the app to play your own music in between stories. I love the pacing of the story, as the app will build in moments where zombies chase you during a mission so that you will have to amp up your pace to outrun them.
The storylines and the voice acting are super engaging (I especially like the ever-chipper Sam Yao, Abel Township's communications director). While there is a single main story line that appears to have 10 seasons of episodes, there are a variety of other story missions on the app, as well as different run training modules (like 5k and half and full marathon training).
I’m certainly not at the marathon training levels, but even my quick 20-minute jog this morning was enough to perk my spirits right up. When I jog, even when it’s at a slow-as-molasses pace, my muscles feel energized, and my spirits are lifted for the entire day. It’s a pleasure I can forget about if I don’t jog for a while, so it was nice to get a jumpstart by checking out this app again.
Do you use any running or exercise apps? If you have any to recommend, share them in the comments below.
Comments