StartRunning: Zero to 5K

Nine weeks, 27 workouts, three a week. First 9 workouts free, then one unlock. No subscription, no account, no ads.

From the couch to thirty minutes of continuous running in nine weeks. No experience needed, no gear, and no prior idea of what "interval training" means.

StartRunning takes you through 27 workouts, three a week. Each one opens with five minutes of brisk walking and ends with five minutes of cooling down. In between, running and walking alternate — at first one minute of running, ninety seconds of walking. By week nine you run for half an hour without stopping.

WHAT GUIDES YOU • Spoken coaching tells you when to run and when to walk. You never have to look at your phone. • Tones and vibration for every change — even with music in your ears and the phone in your pocket. • A screen you can read in one second: one huge number, two buttons, nothing else. • GPS records your route and works out distance, pace and kilometre splits. • Your history shows every run with its map; the progress grid shows the whole plan at a glance.

THREE LEVELS OF COACHING Voice and tones, vibration only, or nothing at all. Switchable mid-run — for the day you run with someone and still want to feel the interval change.

YOU SET THE PACE All 27 workouts can be started and repeated at any time. Nothing is locked, nothing pushes you. If a week feels too fast, run it again. If you end a workout early, the time you ran still counts — only the plan doesn't move on.

CUSTOM WORKOUTS You set total duration, run interval and walk break; the app works out the rest. For after the plan, or for the day you have something else in mind.

WHAT THIS APP DOES NOT DO No ads. No subscription. No sign-up. No account. No tracking, no analytics, nothing shared with anyone.

Your data stays on your device. What you export, you export yourself — as a backup file or as GPX. If you want, the app writes your workouts to Apple Health; that is off by default.

Training and all your data work completely offline. Only the map view loads tiles from the network.

ACCESSIBILITY Every interval type is signalled by word, icon, colour and vibration pattern — never by colour alone. The app holds up at triple system text size and respects the reduce-motion setting.

WHAT IT COSTS The first 9 workouts are free — about three weeks of training, with everything included. After that you unlock everything once: all three plans, custom workouts, for good. No subscription, no follow-up costs. Your history stays open either way, unlocked or not.