The Man Who’s Made a Million Runners

While sub-2hr marathons take the headlines, the real heroes are running 30-plus-min 5ks. Josh Clark is the man who got them off the couch.

The chances are that you know someone who has started running later in life. They weren’t on their high school track team. They didn’t run cross country at a D-something college. They had to earn their miles by making a significant change in their life, and it sucked.

The chances are that they used the Couch to 5K (C25K) program to get up to speed from zero. One of the big scoops (personally speaking) in my book was finding the guy who created that program. At heart, I’m a journalist, so digging through enough layers of information to definitively find the guy who made a training schedule that eight (8!) million people have downloaded via the UK’s NHS app over the past decade alone.

It’s the 30th anniversary of C25K’s inception and exactly 10 years since the NHS incorporated C25K into its app to help the British general public find a healthier lifestyle, so come with me and enjoy this landmark moment for Josh Clark.

Josh Clark - Couch to 5K

The Couch to 5K program is a nine-week training schedule, mixing running and walking, that helps a beginner runner become able to run 5 km (3.1 miles) without stopping. You probably knew that, but the concept of Couch to 5K has become so deeply embedded into the vernacular of running that we can almost take it for granted.