Couch to 5k – Mission Accomplished

Well, I may suck at keeping up a regular blog, but what I can do is finish Couch to 5k!

Here’s a quick breakdown of Weeks 7, 8 and 9.

Week 7 went fairly well, it was a week of 25 minute runs and that was what the last run of Week 6 had been so I knew I could cope with it. I changed my route after the second run. The tail end of my route was always along a main road and I was getting fed up with having to turn the volume right up on my iPod to hear anything and there were always so many pedestrians around for me to dodge. Instead, I decided to run until the halfway alert from Laura, and just turn back at a convenient point by running round the cul-de-sacs. This worked a lot better as the roads are much quieter, and it also makes me feel a bit better on the way back knowing how far there is to go.

The last run of Week 7 was right when the heatwave started and I thought I was going to throw up or pass out. Although I finished the run, I decided to head into town and get myself some 3/4 length leggings and a sleeveless top to replace my full length trousers and sports t-shirts. The guy at Sports Direct managed to leave the big plastic security tag in the leggings though, so me and my boyfriend spent half the men’s Wimbledon final trying to get it apart. We managed in the end with just a couple of rubber bands and some wire cutters. Thanks for the advice, Internet! The new clothes made a huge amount of difference to my running. My legs feel lighter and I feel like I can keep going faster for longer.

This continued into Week 8, all 28 minute runs. Every time I ran, I went just a little bit further. The heat continued but I was getting used to it. I went out a little earlier to try to beat the heat and ended up finding another milestone to target during my runs, a lady who’s always walking that way at the same time every day! I had another near death experience towards the end of the last run though when I started choking, but luckily I managed to keep it going and get to the end.

Which leaves Week 9, three 30 minute runs. I found the music for this week a lot better than in some of the previous weeks. For me, the songs that came on around halfway and with 5 minutes to go were much more motivating and pushed me to keep going. I was surprised to find I didn’t feel too tired at the end of the first one, more amazed that I’d gone from barely being able to run for a minute to going for 30 minutes without a break. I really felt like I’d achieved something and it wasn’t as hard to get out of bed to go for the second run. Today was my final run and I decided to try to push myself to see how far I could go. I wasn’t expecting to do the full 5k, but I’ve measured it on Google Earth and it was about 4.4k in the end, which isn’t something to be sniffed at as far as I’m concerned.

I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do this without the podcast, I didn’t have the belief in my body’s capability and probably wouldn’t have had the motivation to finish. But what am I going to do now?

Well, there’s a Parkrun not too far from me that I’ve been thinking of doing for a little while now. It’ll be nice to actually clock a PB for 5k, my current one was about 45 minutes when I did the Race for Life on my 18th birthday (I’m now 26) with no training and walking part of the way.

I’m probably going to take on the C25K+ podcasts from the NHS as they provided this series. Hopefully I’ll be running 5k within 30 minutes soon. I’ve also only been using my iPod Shuffle, so I might get an arm strap for my phone and download Runkeeper or something like it. Any suggestions, folks?

So am I a running convert? I would have to say yes! Couldn’t see myself saying that 9 weeks ago! Thanks to all of the people who’ve posted helpful comments on here, looking forward to staying in touch!

 

 

Couch to 5k – A Bit of a Slip

Oops, completely missed blogging Week 6! After having very little work come in for a few weeks, I was suddenly swamped and didn’t have time to write.

As with Week 5, it was three different runs:

• Workout 1: a brisk 5-minute walk, then 5 minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking, 8 minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking, 5 minutes of running.
• Workout 2: a brisk 5-minute walk, then 10 minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking, 10 minutes of running.
• Workout 3: a brisk 5-minute walk, then 25 minutes of running with no walking.

I really did struggle with motivation throughout the week. I think it may have been simply being too tired from working my  metaphorical butt off all day to work my physical butt off. It might also have been a bit psychological, that I had achieved the massive goal of 20 minutes and would have been relatively happy to have stopped there.

The first run was more difficult than I was expecting. After managing the 20 minute run and feeling so good after, I was feeling really confident, thinking “5 minutes? Pfft, easy!”. Looking back on it, I probably went out too hard and mis-paced it. But I finished, and that’s the important thing.

I meant to do the second run after one day’s rest, but couldn’t persuade myself to get out of bed and go and ended up skipping a day. This meant my next run was back in Portsmouth when I went to stay with my family for the weekend for my Nan’s and best friend’s birthdays. Although the area definitely isn’t unfamiliar, I’ve only ever run down there once early in the programme. I didn’t have any of my normal milestones to look out for (warm-up ends at that lamppost, 5 minutes gets me to the pub…) and the weather was pretty sucky. Where it’s on the coast, the breeze is a bit stronger than up here in Nottingham and I was running along the shoreline so had the lovely smell of drying seaweed to accompany me round. It wasn’t until the second part of the run that the rain started to come down though. I haven’t run in much more than spitting rain before and it put me off my stride a bit, but again – I FINISHED. Even if I did have to completely redo my hair before taking my Nan for high tea at a posh hotel!

My third run should have been a couple of days later in Portsmouth, but again, I decided against running that morning. I needed to visit my Nan in the morning before the three hour drive home and then finish off some work so I decided to just get on with my day. So that pushed it to the start of what should have been Week 7. I was only a day out though, and I’ve been running every other day this week to get back on track. The run itself didn’t go too badly. The 20 minute confidence boost was still there and where I’d had a couple of days’ rest, I was ready to go. The worst part was that some flowers have bloomed at the very end of my route which smell so bad they almost choked me! My legs were pretty jellified at the end, but I was really pleased that I’d made it. At the end of the podcast, Laura tells you that you are officially a runner now, so I’ve taken that into this week. As always, it’s as much about the psychology as the physical fitness.