5 Ways to Hate Running Less

Running sure isn’t the most glamorous of sports.

Bare Blends

Bare Blends

2014-02-01
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One of my good friends has an athletics singlet emblazoned with ‘Live to Run! Love to Run!’ that she wears from time to time. She does not live to run, and certainly does not love it. She liked the colour and in the absence of a Lorna Jane ‘I’d only run if zombies were chasing me’ range, what’s a girl to do?


Don’t immediately set your sights on running an hour continuously… an hour is a pretty long way!


Running sure isn’t the most glamorous of sports; there’s a fair bit of puffing, muscle crying, a guaranteed sweat shower and its super hard to look pretty at the same time, but for everyone who’s saving up their legs for the zombie apocalypse, twenty-twelve has been and gone so there’s no longer any need to rest up.

Here’s 5 ways to hate running less and some training tips to get you started (:

  1. Shopping!

    Things can’t be that bad when the first tip involves credit cards and air-conditioned shopping centres. Buy yourself a good pair of shoes: make sure they fit perfectly (unlike the school shoes mum bought in first grade and aimed for them to last until the end of primary school) and look good. Looks certainly aren’t everything, but looking good lends to feeling good and when you’re feeling good, running hurts less, I promise!

  2. Toys

    My Garmin watch is one of my best friends, I run by myself a lot and having something there to tell you how far/fast/long you’re running can push you to do an extra lap, run a bit faster or make it another 10 minutes. Mine makes excited noises and the screen rains stars when I set a new record, which is also nice. It’s like a little computer high-5, thanks computer.

  3. Friends

    Running doesn’t have to be a solo pilgrimage to sweat-hell, take a friend down with you! Enjoying yourself and being in the moment with your body is the easiest way to get in kilometres. Run somewhere beautiful, somewhere different, enjoy each others company or try race each other between stop signs and treat yourselves to something nice (Bare Blends smoothie?) when it’s all over.

  4. Do Good

    Running is one of the most charitable sports around: entries towards fun runs like the City2Surf go towards fantastic organizations, or you can run for a charity team. No only will you feel good, you’ll have something to train for, a goal in mind and some motivation to make it to that finish line.

  5. Start Slow

    Remembering back to school PE lessons and the countless laps you had to run ‘as fast as you can’, its really not a surprise that we don’t all ‘Live to Run! Love to Run!’ Running is NOT all about speed! Starting out its far better to run slower and complete the distance goal you had in mind, rather than come out sprinting and fall short. Speed will come with fitness but it’s really important to build that base first. Below are some ideas to get you started running.

Don’t immediately set your sights on running an hour continuously… an hour is a pretty long way! Start with an alternating set of five minutes running, five minutes walking for 30 minutes two-three times per week; every two weeks, reduce one minute of walking and add it to the running (six minutes running, four minutes walking). Once you’ve built up the whole half hour running, it’s time to start adding time! Increase the length of work out as you feel, but no more than five minutes a week (you don’t want to get too sore!) In the next post I’ll talk about some interval training tips and how to avoid running injuries by mixing up your training week.

Until then, happy running/zombie-chase training (:

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Bare Blends

2014-02-01