Couch to 5K Schedule Calculator

How this calculator dates your plan

The calculator treats each plan week as a Sunday-to-Saturday calendar week. Week 1 is the first of those weeks in which all 3 of your run days fall on or after your start date. If your start date lands after your first run day of the week, week 1 moves to the following Sunday, so you never begin part-way through a week. The start date itself doesn't have to be a run day.

Your final run is week 9, run 3. Say your start date is Thu, Oct 1, 2026 and you run Mon/Wed/Fri. That week's Monday has already passed, so week 1 opens on Sun, Oct 4, the first run is Mon, Oct 5 and the final run is Fri, Dec 4, 2026.

Race mode keeps at least one rest day between your final run and race day, in line with the NHS advice to rest between runs. From that rule it works out the latest start date: the first run of the latest 9-week plan that still finishes in time. It also counts your spare weeks, which is how many weeks you could repeat (or delay your start by) and still keep that rest day. Spare weeks are always whole numbers, because repeating a week moves every later session, and your final run, exactly 7 days. With a race on Sat, Dec 26, 2026, the latest start is Mon, Oct 19, and the Oct 5 start above leaves 2 spare weeks and 22 days between the final run and the race.

If the race is too soon for all 9 weeks, the result says how many weeks short you are and how far through the plan you'd get by race day while keeping a rest day. You can still take part and walk-run the race at the level you've reached, or pick a later race and follow the full plan.

The 9-week run/walk plan, week by week

The timings come from the NHS plan. Every session has a 5-minute warm-up walk before it and a 5-minute cool-down walk after it, and the totals below include both.

Week	What a session looks like	Total time
1	Run 1 min, walk 1.5 min (7 times), then run 1 min	28.5 min
2	Run 1.5 min, walk 2 min (5 times), then run 1.5 min	29 min
3	Run 1.5 min, walk 1.5 min, run 3 min, walk 3 min, run 1.5 min, walk 1.5 min, run 3 min	25 min
4	Run 3 min, walk 1.5 min, run 5 min, walk 2.5 min, run 3 min, walk 1.5 min, run 5 min	31.5 min
5	Run 1: run 5, walk 3, run 5, walk 3, run 5. Run 2: run 8, walk 5, run 8. Run 3: run 20 min without walking	31, 31 and 30 min
6	Run 1: run 5, walk 3, run 8, walk 3, run 5. Run 2: run 10, walk 3, run 10. Run 3: run 25 min without walking	34, 33 and 35 min
7	Run 25 min without walking	35 min
8	Run 28 min without walking	38 min
9	Run 30 min without walking	40 min

The plan builds slowly. Week 1 asks for 1-minute runs, week 5 ends with 20 minutes of running without a walk break, and week 9 is three 30-minute runs. Across all 27 sessions that adds up to 875 minutes (14 hours 35 minutes), of which 489 minutes are running.

The NHS plan and the 1996 original

The 9-week run/walk idea goes back to Josh Clark, who wrote the original plan in 1996: three workouts a week of 20 to 30 minutes, for 9 weeks. The NHS version keeps that shape and most of the sessions. Weeks 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 match, and so do the first two runs of week 6. The differences are early and small. The original's weeks 1 and 2 alternate jogging and walking for 20 minutes without a set number of repeats. Its week 3 repeats the whole block twice and ends on a walk, and its last run of week 6 is 22 minutes rather than 25. The original also lists distance options next to the times, such as a quarter mile or 3 minutes. This calculator uses the NHS timings throughout, because they give an exact count for every interval.

The name is a bit misleading. The plan is measured in minutes, not kilometres. Finishing week 9 means running for 30 minutes. Covering 5 km in that time takes an average pace of 6:00 per km (about 9:39 per mile). If your comfortable pace is slower, you'll cover less than 5 km in 30 minutes, and that's normal. Keep running 3 times a week and add a few minutes at a time until the distance comes.

Picking run days, rest days and spare weeks

The NHS plan has you running 3 times a week and suggests a rest day between each run. With 3 runs in a 7-day week you can always manage that: Mon/Wed/Fri, Tue/Thu/Sat, Sun/Tue/Thu and Mon/Wed/Sat all work. The one to watch is the weekend. Saturday and Sunday sit at opposite ends of a planner week, but they're back-to-back days, so a Wed/Sat/Sun pattern gives you two runs in a row every weekend. The calculator flags any adjacent pair, including that one.

Repeating a week doesn't mean you've failed. The NHS says "it's totally okay to repeat a week". If you miss a run, do it on your next run day and carry on rather than doubling up. After a week or more off, the sensible move is to go back to the last week you finished comfortably. The guide to getting back on track with habits covers the routine side of a break.

That's why it pays to start early enough to have 1 or 2 spare weeks. In the example above, a 12-week lead time (Oct 1 to a race on Dec 26) leaves 2 spare weeks, so you can repeat two weeks and still rest the day before the race.

Not medical advice. If you have a heart, lung or joint condition, are pregnant, are recovering from an injury or haven't exercised in a long time, talk to a doctor before you start. Go at a pace where you can still talk, and stop and get advice if anything hurts or you feel unwell.

Track your runs as a weekly habit

A 9-week plan is really a weekly habit: three runs, every week, for nine weeks. In Goal4, add a Weekly habit with a goal of 3 and tap once after each run. Goal4 weeks run Sunday to Saturday, just like the plan weeks here, so each plan week you finish also completes a Goal4 week and adds one to your streak. The habit streak calculator shows how streak milestones build over time.

Mid-week, the streak shows as "ending" until your third run is in, which is a useful nudge on a Thursday evening. A repeated plan week still has 3 runs in it, so it counts too. Set a reminder for your usual run time and make the other 4 days quiet days, so you're only nudged on run days. If you forget to tap after a run, you can edit any past day.

Goal4 doesn't time your intervals or track distance. Use a phone timer or the NHS app for the run/walk switches, and Goal4 for the weekly count. Goal4's free tier covers up to 3 habits and 2 reminders per habit, which is enough for this. If a bad week makes you want to stop, read about the never miss twice rule first.