There’s a lot of things out there that will kill you, but sitting seems to be creeping up the ladder. Weird, right? I work for a tech company where a lot of people have jumped on the standing desk bandwagon to reduce the number of hours they remain planted on their butts and increasing their chances of chronic disease, reduced life expectancy, kidney disease, crappy mental health, obesity, and just plain death. Death. Death. Death. (Check out this article from Popular Science if you’re curious.)

I don’t know about you, but I sit at work when I’m not running between meetings, and then I sit some more when I get home because I’m writing. Eventually, your hips cramp up so you wind up lurching from place to place, then you develop a hunch, and your hands rigor into this permanent position near the chest, fingers clawed into a typing position. Add to that the perpetually pale complexion, hair loss, buggly eyes, and permanently haunted look, and you start to resemble something like this:

Nosferatu

Great look, right?

So what’s a writer supposed to do? Get up for one. More your butt.

There’s this one analogy I like about writing: it’s kinda like exercise. You don’t get off the couch and run a marathon without doing yourself serious injury, and similarly, you don’t just starting writing 5,000 words a day without burning out pretty quick (if you regularly write 5k a day, please tell me your secret.)

So I started thinking, following the completion of my first first draft (which was definitely like a marathon), if I can do this, I can do anything. And then I started thinking, “Hmm, marathon.” Add in a little movement to prevent going full Nosferatu with all the sitting and staring at a screen, get some exercise, and maybe knock another item off my bucket list.

After a little bit of research, I found something perfectly inline with my love of horror and my newfound love of running that keeps me active and keeps the creative juices flowing.

Zombies, Run! App

You might be a veteran runner, or you might have a serious appreciation for the Romero-style remake zombies populating the Dawn of the Dead reboot, but one thing’s for sure: these days, the dead don’t shamble. They want your brains, and they’re gonna chase you for them. Better get those legs conditioned, girl, otherwise you’re not gonna survive the apocalypse.

Zombies, Run! is an app for newbs and veterans to running alike. It boasts up to 160 different missions, interval training to build up your stamina so you can run distances, and has a beginner option for people who’ve never run before that follows the couch-to-5k method. Oh yeah, there’s a story behind it when you’re running those missions.

You’ve got people to save. Items to collect. Zombie infestations to avoid.

This is the gamification of exercise with a horror spin on it, and it works for iPhone and Android devices.

Check out the trailer:

Zombies, Run! 3 is available on the App Store and Google Play  $3.99, and the 5K Running App for Beginners is $1.99

Have you used either app? Are the undead currently chasing you?

Tell me about it in the comments.