Couch to 5k

I didn't manage my goal of convincingly running for 25 minutes at 8½' /km. My second and third week 7 runs were much less good than the first one, hard work and slow. I felt I improved from 7.2 to 7.3 but the numbers didn't reflect that.

Then my life exploded the way it always does in September and I missed a couple of weeks. I decided to restart by seeing if I could run 30 minutes slowly, and yes I could. Second run again felt a bit less of a struggle but within the limits of measurement was the same pace and distance. My third, so-called "graduation" run was somewhat let down by Zombies, Run! being screwy. It didn't think I had covered 1 km until well over 10 minutes into the run, though by known markers on the route I was pretty sure I had. Then when I looked at the splits it claimed I'd run the first km in under 8½ minutes, but the overall average pace it reported was considerably slower than any of the splits, which is not how averages work. My best estimate is slightly slower than 9' /km.

Today I went back to running in 5 minute intervals, and managed pretty much 9' /km exactly. Pacing was a bit off; each interval was slower than the last. But I felt like I had a good workout and challenged myself in a different way from running slowly for the whole 30 minutes.

So I don't know. I was hoping that going all the way through the C25K programme again would produce real improvements, but I'm still running at about the same pace I was before I went back to the formal incremental programme. And even that not reliably; easily a quarter of my runs are much slower than that for no very obvious reason. On the positive side, I can do something which I couldn't do at the start of the summer, namely run for 30 minutes continuously with no walking breaks. And I think, though I'm not completely sure, that my overall fitness is better, which is most of the point.

And we're past the equinox and rapidly running out of daylight, so I need a new plan if I'm going to keep this up. I think I need to join the gym at work and go back to running on treadmills.

Many thanks to everybody who comments with encouragement, and posts about your own C25K experiences. This community definitely helps.

I've been away for just over a week, so I made a positive decision not to try to keep up running while I was on holiday, but to restart as soon as I got back. I was worried that I would have lost a lot of fitness, but actually I was doing quite active things while on holiday. A fair amount of walking, much of it uphill (since I visited a place that's much more hilly than my hometown of Cambridge), and even some kayaking, which is totally my favourite form of exercise except for the bit where it requires you to find a boat and some water, so I never actually do it.

It seemed sensible to restart week 6 after the break, so I did that this morning, with jack, and I improved my pace from the 9'20'' /km the first time to 9' /km today. A good run, I felt like I had extra in the tank if I'd wanted to go further or faster. I think it helped that I'd had enough sleep and enough hydration and the weather was cool but not cold, and maybe I just got lucky, but it's nice to have such a positive experience after taking a break.

I completed week 5. I'm really proud of that, because the ramp up from 5 minutes continuous running to 20 minutes is the steepest part of the C25K curve. It took me slightly more than a week since I couldn't get out for several days (due to life reasons more than laziness, at least).

Run 1 with 5 minute intervals, 9½'/km. Run 2 with 8 minute intervals I have absolutely no measurement for since Zombies, Run! crashed after three minutes, and I thought I'd restart it once I got to the walking interval, and it crashed again so I tried restarting my phone, which then spent a very scary amount of time failing to boot. So I did two lots of 8 minutes which I didn't measure, with a very long gap in between while I tried to coax my phone out of its sulk. Phone is ok now, and I wasn't going for speed anyway, I was just trying to see if I could complete the two long intervals on a very hot day, and I could.

And today, the weather is finally bearable, and I ran a continuous 20 minutes at 9' 22'' /km. I didn't feel bad at all by the end, so I think I could have gone either further or maybe even a bit faster. I think if I manage to complete the whole 9 weeks I will in fact be a bit faster than the roughly 9½'/km I was running at the start, in 5 minute intervals. I was hoping to be somewhat faster by the middle of the programme, but then I have covered most of it during a very long heatwave, so probably wasn't building up speed as much as I might.

Also I have run exactly 50 km since I restarted using Zombies, Run! which is pleasing.

I managed to forget to put my running shoes on when I went out and ran in my normal shoes. They're soft-soled trainer-like things, so hopefully haven't wrecked my feet and ankles too badly. But anyway I didn't even notice until the end of the run, so hopefully it didn't have many consequences.

Week 4 run 2: Zombies Run recorded completely silly times for me, which is always annoying because I like getting my 'scores'. I think I was probably slowish as it was another really hot run.

Week 4 run 3: Zombies Run gave me a sensible overall result for the whole run: 2.8 km in 24 minutes, or 8'44'' /km. I believe that as it's a bit faster than the first time I tried this workout, but not ludicrously fast. But the rubbish timing last time makes me unsure, as does the fact that the splits did not make any sense, claiming I ran 3 km in under 3 minutes by zigzagging about all over the place. Which apart from being obviously wrong is inconsistent with a final distance of under 3 km in over 20 minutes.

I don't want to give up ZR because I'm enjoying the story and finding that it helps a lot with motivation to keep going and not just clock-watch, which I need at this stage of the programme.

I also got my boyfriend cjwatson into Zombies Run. He's also acquired the same piece of kit as me: a headband with built-in Bluetooth headphones. That is way more comfortable for running than in ear headphones, and doesn't advertise the fact that you can't hear like over ear headphones. The sound quality isn't amazing but I'm pleased with it. So I mentioned to him that I have a themed playlist which contains songs about zombies and other undead / the apocalypse / running away, most of them with a fast beat except I couldn't resist Zombie by The Cranberries.

In case anyone is interested: Zombie music.

Next week: 3 X 5 minutes for the start of Week 5. I feel reasonably confident about that.

The heatwave continues but if I don't run when it's hot I never will. I went out with jack again, and I had my first try at Week 3. I took things reasonably easy, and was slightly slower than my week 2 runs but also didn't feel exhausted at any point. I'll see if I can manage a little bit faster next time.

I had a hard time motivating myself to go out in this heatwave, and I thought, some novelty might help. So I had a go at a workout from week 2 of Zombies Run 5 K training.

Zom25K is structured very differently from the C25K programmes I'm used to (mostly the NHS one but others I've seen are roughly similar). Instead of a steady progression of 1 minute, 90 seconds, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, it goes from 15 second intervals to 30 second intervals to... 5 minutes??? I've been doing 6 x 90 second intervals as fast as I can push myself, so changing to 5 x 30 seconds felt like a big step down. Especially since the app recommends that you run these intervals slowly; I feel that I am not going to build up my fitness meaningfully by running slowly for 30 seconds, so I ran as fast as I could bear to in the heat.

The other thing that's different about Zom25K is that in the early weeks it suggests you finish out the workout with a long 'freeform' segment where you can choose your own balance of running and walking. I think I would have had a really hard time with that if I were a complete beginner to running, but in this case I jogged slowly for 5 minutes, walked for 3 minutes and ran a bit faster for the last two minutes.

My total distance over 30 minutes was 3 km; I wasn't really expecting an amazing pace when it was boiling hot and I spent less than 10 minutes of the workout actually running. So I think that was a useful workout, but I am probably going to go back to the more conventional programme, possibly with the normal Zombies game later on when the runs get long enough to be boring.

I was reasonably pleased with my first attempt at week 1, so I decided I could probably stretch myself by adding an extra couple of intervals (10 intervals / 25 minutes instead of the official 8 intervals / 20 minutes). Conditions were not exactly pleasant; it's boiling hot, and the pollen counts are off the charts.

But I did in fact manage 10 intervals, and my pace wasn't any slower than when I was only doing 8. 8' /km overall. My pacing wasn't spot on; I went a bit too fast for the first couple of intervals, and was starting to drag a bit by the end, but nothing terrible. I think I'll go for 12 intervals / 30 minutes next time, so that moving to the 90 second intervals in week 2 feels like a step down rather than a step up.