c25k | Recent Entries

I haven't given up on couch to 5k. I have done a minor injury to my knee at hockey practice and am waiting for it to fully heal before resuming running. I am already back skating so hoping only a few more days before I feel confident running again.

rmc28

A morning run for a change today, and I remembered to track from the beginning. The weather was a little more challenging: bit of a breeze, bit of a drizzle, but the thing about running in late summer drizzle is it's more cooling than annoying. The actual run was fine, I feel like I'm getting used to the actual movement of running and more comfortable doing it.

One of my hockey teammates said the nice thing about running was how little time it takes compared to hockey practice: you put on your trainers and you go, you get back and shower and you're done. No getting to the rink and taking fifteen minutes to put skates and pads on and the same again in reverse afterwards.

Now to prove I can still get offspring to school on time ...

rmc28

I forgot to start my tracker until after the first interval but I do have a satisfying heart rate trace of the remaining five. I'm pleased that the recovery between runs is so clear.

Running for 90 seconds is a little harder than 60s, but I wasn't worried about not finishing at any point. If anything the last running interval felt like I was shifting into a good flow state (or possibly just overdoing it, who knows). My knees sometimes complained a little during the run, especially the right one where my hip and knee muscles are chronically tight. Trying to "run quietly" seems to help with the discomfort; I'm not worried yet but I'll keep paying attention.

It occurred to me when attempting to schedule my runs this week that now, in the early weeks when I seem to be finding it straightforward, is the time to cram them in as much as I can. My hockey schedule will crank up in a couple of weeks, with more practices and the start of weekend games, and I will need to ease up on running while my body adjusts - but running more frequently now will be its own ramp-up to the season.

rmc28

I didn't run Friday in the end, and the weekend has been very busy. But this evening was my next opportunity to run, so I took it. Next runs this week should be Wed, Fri, Sun. I am planning week by week, and trying to keep one complete rest day each week, which is usually Thursday.

This time I tracked from the beginning so unsurprisingly my pace is a little slower than day 2, but I have another lovely heart rate trace with all 8 running intervals clearly visible. A friend who saw it pointed out the nice recovery this shows.

Overall, week 1 was fine, not especially challenging. I breathed hard, I got sweaty, I definitely needed to stretch afterward, but at no point was I worried about not being able to complete a running interval or the overall workout. I don't love it, I don't hate it, it feels pleasant to have finished.

Next week is 6x 90s running, with 120s in between. So the total run time goes up to 9 minutes from 8 and the overall time to 29 minutes from 28.5.

rmc28

Survived the first day back at work after a week's leave. Celebrated by actually following my plan to go for a run on getting home.

This time I managed to turn on my fitness tracker half way through the warmup, so I have an amusing heart-rate trace where the 8 running intervals are very clearly visible. My overall pace was 10:04 min/km which isn't bad given I was walking most of the 24 minutes that I tracked.

It continues to be fine. It's definitely a sweatier workout than my bike ride to the rink, so it ticks the cardio box nicely, and I'm not struggling yet or hating it.

Next run Friday morning. The one after: probably next Monday evening. I need to figure out my skating schedule for next week first. I also want to err on the side of under- rather than over-training.

rmc28

Hello there. It's been a while.

I've decided to start running again, which means starting c25k again. This community worked really well to keep me accountable before so I'm going to try again. (And if anyone wants to join me, I'll do my best to cheer you on.) I'll probably be running 1-2 times a week to start with, rather than the official 3 times, as I'm fitting this around ice hockey practices and not trying to ramp up too much too fast.

( motivation, scheduling, and app choice )

I last ran regularly during the covid lockdowns, and basically stopped as soon as ice rinks reopened in May 2021. I used to say I didn't love running but I liked having run and that still seems to be the case. Today I managed day 1 just fine (thanks hockey for the increased baseline fitness!), I didn't love it, I'm glad I did it, and I'm almost looking forward to doing day 2 on Monday.

liv

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.

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: Jennie Abrahamson: What is true

liv

In my programme, the last run of week 6 and all of week 7 involve running continuously for 25 minutes. The first time I did that I measured a pace of about 9½'/km, and when I tried again today my GPS gave me nonsense readings but estimating based on my knowledge of the path I wasn't much worse than 8½'/km. I would like to confirm that as a real time, and I have two more week 7 runs to do that. But I definitely did go further than the first time I tried the 25 minute run.

I'm inclined to skip week 8 because I'm pretty confident I can go from 25 minutes to 30 minutes without too much trouble. And it would be really nice if I can keep that to a pace under 9'/km, but we'll see. There seems to be a lot of random-ish variation from one run to the next.

Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: The Kinks: Skin and bones

liv

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.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: Manic Street Preachers: Revolution

liv

My phone broke so I couldn't properly measure my runs for a while. I decided the best plan was to do some 'free' running until I could get the phone fixed. I did a couple of 20 minute runs, and felt like I was improving, getting just a little further in the 20 minutes each time. And I tried running home from work one day, but that went pretty badly; I can run in my normal work shoes, but running in a skirt rather than leggings is a bit grim, and it was very hot and I was tired and the route was unfamiliar, so I only managed 10 minutes.

Today I got back to my old Zombies, Run! set-up, and tried the first workout of week 6. Week 6 is the weird one where you go back to intervals after completing the long run in week 5. The NHS programme I'm using says 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 5 minutes, but it suggests an 8 minute walking break after the middle run. That sounded pointless to me; I'm as recovered as I'm going to be after 5 minutes of walking. So I swapped it round and did 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 8 minutes, with a 5 minute break between the two long intervals.

I managed that short interval at the start decently fast, covering the first KM in 8½ minutes even though some of that was walking. Then I was a bit slower for the two long intervals, and ended up doing 3 km in 28 minutes, so an overall pace of 9'20'' per km. Part of me wants to try that again and see if I can improve the pace a little, but it's probably most sensible to go on to the second workout which is just two lots of 10 minutes.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: The Hidden Cameras: Carpe jugular

liv

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.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: Beborn Beton: The edge of wisdom

angrboda

Based on how my gentler runs are getting at the same time gentler and gentler and more and more difficult, I would conclude that the idea of the gentler run is a good one. I've decided that once we're free of this blasted heat wave, I'm going to figure out how to delete my data from the app and just start over from scratch and build from there. Then we'll see how long I'll make it before winter. (I could do so without deleting, but it'd be harder to keep track of) Today I was seriously struggling with three minutes running. I have always been the sort of person who suffers rather in heat, and I think this fact is being illustrated quite nicely here.

On the upside, today I got sort of fist-pumped by a passing mamil, so that was encouraging. Or, in hindsight, his gesture could have been interpreted somewhat differently in which case I got slightly threatened by a passing mamil, but I don't think that's very likely.

liv

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.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: Qntal: Dulcis Amor

liv

I tried Week 4, with the aim of just completing it and not worrying too much about pace. The weather has got a lot more pleasant, warm but not unbearably hot. I switched back to Zombies Run because my problem with longer intervals is more often boredom than needing to concentrate. And I did complete the whole workout, and it felt reasonably comfortable, and ZR recorded my pace as a little over 9' /km, which is fine because I expected to be a bit slower and anyway ZR seems to be a bit more pessimistic than Runkeeper.

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: Metallica: Creeping death

angrboda

O hai, it's been a while.

I have been running. It's just I've also had a number of skips lately. I haven't actually quite reached the point where I'm entirely comfortable with skipping a run, because the more I've skipped the easier it is and that way just leads to inactivity. And I'm not the most disciplined of people at the best of times, so I need to be really careful with skipping runs now that I've finally got started again.

So I've skipped a few, but I've never skipped when I didn't feel like it was at least in a small way justified. I've never skipped solely because I didn't want to go. I never want to go, but there have been other reasons as well.

( My excuses. May or may not be poor, but they are my excuses )

But today I went out, and again it was hot and dry and hot and although it's my day off, I seem to be incapable of running in the morning when the sun is not beating down quite so hard. I keep telling myself it's what I'll do. Have yet to manage it. On top of that, I accidentally started the next run instead of repeating the run from last time as intended. I only discovered this when I was instructed to run for 9 minutes rather than the expected 8! Challenge, however, accepted.

In all humility, I am dead chuffed that I completed it.

Also, in other news, have received that phone armband, so first run without having to move my sim card to the old phone and also first run without having a phone stuffed down the front of my bra. Not certain how I'm going to get on with it, it might be a question of getting used to it, but it's definitely a step up from the bra.

liv

So I tried week 3 a second time, and didn't at all think I was going particularly slowly, or struggling, but I ended up with a pace of 9'24'' /km instead of the 8'47'' I'd managed two days before. I know one shouldn't over-analyse, but that one threw me for a loop, not because I'm upset that I had a slow run, but because I lost all confidence in my ability to judge how fast I'm going.

The next time I went out, I decided to do something different. I ran 1 km continuously (conveniently the distance from my house to my boyfriend's house), and then stopped to have a cup of tea with BF and ran the 1 km back. Just over 10 minutes each way, but that's the first time since I restarted running that I've actually managed a continuous kilometre at all, so I'm quite pleased with that. Also I expect I'll be at least a bit faster when it's not 30 degrees and humid.

Today we had Actual! Clouds! and I ran week 3, plus a third repeat of the 90 seconds + 3 minutes pattern, at a pace of 8'31'' /km. I am not surprised that I went a bit faster in the cooler weather, but I didn't think I was at anything like the fastest pace I've recorded in a month. So apparently I can not begin to tell the difference between an 8½ minute average pace and a 9½ minute average pace, but at least I'm picking up speed again.

This means I'm done with with the very short sprint intervals, and I move on to Week 4. I am a bit nervous about only getting 90 seconds of rest; I usually find I don't really recover in 90 seconds. If it's too hard for me I might extend the walking intervals somewhat.

Current Mood: confused
Current Location: Cambridge, England

liv

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.

Current Mood: okay
Current Location: Cambridge, England

liv

It's still very hot. Today I ran trivially faster than the last time I tried the standard Week 2 run, within the error of measurement exactly the same pace and distance. But this time the whole thing felt a bit better. The first couple of intervals were only a little faster than the later ones, and I didn't feel like keeping going for 90 seconds was a horrible ordeal. I think I'm ready to move up to Week 3, and I think that's going to do me more good than trying to get the pace for Week 2 under 8½' /km.

jack came out with me but this time he was aiming for a longer continuous run at a faster pace than I could keep up with. Which meant I walked back to our start point on my own to wait for him. Two (separate) annoying jerks decided to hit on / harass me, at least they didn't do it while I was concentrating on running but only during the cooldown. And they were annoying rather than threatening, but really, I could do without.

Current Mood: irritated
Current Location: Cambridge, England

liv

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.

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: Cambridge, England
Current Music: Little Boots: Meddle

liv

Went out with

jack, managed to find a pace where I was pushing myself but could just barely manage the 6 x 90 second intervals. Overall average pace just over the 8½' /km, so that's an improvement.

jack ran alongside me and then carried on for another 10 minutes while I was getting my breath back.

Current Mood: energetic
Current Location: Cambridge, England

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Couch to 5k

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week 2 day 2

week 2, day 1

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Week 1, day 2

Week 1, day 1

30 minutes continuous running

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Restarting week 6

Week 6.1: 9'20'' /km

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Zombie silliness

Week 4: 9'11'' /km

In which I'm full of excuses...

Self-monitoring is hard

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