Great North Run set to inspire thousands to take up running with NHS couch to 5K

National running events like the London Marathon and Great North Run inspire thousands of armchair viewers to get healthy, according to new figures released by the NHS today.

Visits to the NHS couch to 5K webpage are expected to rise significantly this weekend as the Great North Run takes place in Newcastle.

Analysis by NHS England, which runs the nhs.uk website, shows that traffic to the webpage rose by 136% on the day of this year’s London Marathon (Sunday 21 April) – with 13,232 visits to the page, compared with 5,602 on the previous day.

Visits also rose by 63% on the day of last year’s Great North Run (Sunday 20 September), with more than 2,000 extra visits to the webpage.

The NHS Couch to 5K programme is a 9-week running plan – aimed at helping non-runners and beginners gradually work towards running 5K.

The plan involves three runs a week, with a day of rest in between, and a different schedule for each of the 9 weeks.

Professor Stephen Powis, NHS medical director said: “Good luck to all the runners taking part in the Great North Run this weekend. Every single one of them is about to become an inspiration to thousands of people – and that’s backed up by our NHS website data.

“Whenever there’s a televised running race, we always see a considerable increase in the number of people coming to the NHS website for information on the Couch to 5K programme, and this weekend will be no different.

“The Couch to 5K programme is a fantastic way of getting beginners running for 30 minutes or more. And who knows – in a year’s time you could be taking your place at the starting line of a half-marathon.”

The Couch to 5K programme is available as an app, which is an audio guided programme, so it’s like running alongside your own personal trainer.

British athlete and narrator on the Couch to 5K app, Steve Cram said: “It’s fantastic to see so many people inspired by the Great North Run who want to give running a go and Couch to 5K is a great place to start.

“It’s really flexible, you can do it all in in your own time, and it’s something that’s achievable for absolutely everyone.”

Latest NHS statistics on public health show that there were 8,716 hospital admissions due to obesity in 2022/23, which was a 13% increase on the previous year.

Published last year, the Health Survey for England 2021 showed a higher proportion of men (70%) than women (59%) aged 16 and over met the 2011 aerobic guidelines of at least 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week.

According to the NHS website, there’s strong scientific evidence that being physically active can help you lead a healthier and happier life. Exercise can reduce the risk of major illnesses, such as coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer, and lower the risk of early death by up to 30%.

The Great North Run is the world’s biggest half marathon, with 60,000 runners taking on the 13.1-mile route from Newcastle to South Shields. The event also includes an elite wheelchair race and a visually impaired race.

The Couch to 5K app has recently introduced haptics – vibration alerts on mobile phones – to help better support and guide deaf and hard of hearing runners through runs and the programme.

The NHS website is the UK’s biggest health website with an estimated 2.1 million visits a day in 2023 from people seeking information and advice. It includes over 4,000 pages and provides information about 990 medical conditions, as well other health services including applying for a free UK Global Health Insurance Card, finding a GP, and a pregnancy due date calculator.

More details on the NHS Couch to 5k programme are available at nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/get-running-with-couch-to-5k.

You can download the NHS Couch to 5K app from the App store or Google Play.