Running News Daily

Here’s What 30 Days of 5Ks Did to This Guy’s Body

YouTuber Tom Morley documented the effects a daily three-mile run had on his weight loss and overall fitness.

Between his studies and freelance work, Tom Morely spends most of his time sitting at a desk. While he does train weights several times a week, he does little to no cardio, and so in a recent YouTube video, he decided to add some physical activity to his daily life. Specifically, he sets himself the challenge of running a 5K every day for a whole month, to see what kind of effect it will have on his overall health and fitness.

"I know it's going to be a hard challenge, and I know I'm gonna want to quit at times, but if I can give it my all, if I can throw everything into this, I really think I can do it," he says, adding that he will take measurements of his arms, chest, legs and waist on Day 1 and Day 30: "I want to see how my individual body parts react to this 30 days."

On the first day of the 30-day challenge, Morley completes his first 5K run in exactly 33 minutes, which he is not entirely satisfied with—and his time increases each day after that. 

"Unfortunately, getting a bit slower each day was the pattern for about a week," he says. "The pain just got so bad in my calves and my knees because obviously I hadn't been doing this level of intensity in terms of cardio probably ever. My legs were starting to struggle with that."

When his time finally begins to improve in the second week, Morley feels much more "motivated to progress," and pushes on. "I'm starting to enjoy running," he says. "I never thought I'd say those words." 

His time on the 5Ks continues to decrease into the third week of the month, and he achieves a series of new PRs, culminating in a 28:02 run on Day 20. Unfortunately, this is where the challenge hits a painful, impassable obstacle: Morley breaks his leg.

"It's just so annoying when you try so hard, and put so much time and so much energy into something, and then something like this happens and completely kills it," he says. "I worked so hard for the results that I'd already seen, and I'm sitting her, 11 days after surgery... I can't even walk without crutches... Right now I can't even imagine doing that again."

"I'm absolutely gutted," he says. "I really was looking forward to Day 30 here, to see the results, had my body fat percentage decreased, had my muscles increased in size, or maybe lost some size due to the weight loss? I was really intrigued to see what would happen there."

Morley notes that in the 22 days where he was able to complete a daily 5K, he lost 9 pounds (4.1 kg) and is proud that he was able to knock nearly 5 minutes off his PR—and he says he looks forward to trying the full challenge again once he has healed.