Week 2 tribulations
Jun. 21st, 2018 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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c25kSo having built up to a full half hour in 1 minute intervals, at a pace I was pleased with, I was confident about week 2.
First attempt, last weekend: I had some bad news and was somewhat teary, and crying is never great for running. I pushed ahead anyway, and then had trouble with my timing app, Intervaly. It often crashes when I get a notification from another program, and I ought to experiment with different apps but my phone often doesn't have enough memory to cope with switching, so I'm not sure how much this problem is fixable. Anyway, I spent some of the run faffing about restarting my timer, and much of it not really trusting that I'd get the signal to end my run intervals. I came out with a pace of 8'45'' /km, and feeling I was probably capable of doing week 2 a bit faster than that.
Then I was travelling for work in a pattern that meant I couldn't reasonably run until today. I just horribly messed up the pacing. I started out way too fast and completely collapsed part way through the second interval. I took a full rest break (standing still until I could breathe comfortably, no walking) and then attempted the last four intervals at my comfortable distance pace. The 'average' was still 8'45'' but I think that's a bit meaningless when it's two very fast intervals, a rest and then four slow intervals.
I'm not sure what's best to do at this point. Try once more and see if it works any better next time is probably the first step. My worry is that if I run the intervals fast enough to get the benefit of doing short, intense intervals, then 2 minutes isn't actually enough for me to recover. But it might get better with practice; C25K is set up so that the first time you try a new workout you are supposed to find it tough. If I try three week 2 runs and I'm still struggling, I can either go for longer walking breaks between my 90 second runs, or I can try alternating fast running intervals with slow running intervals for a bit.
First attempt, last weekend: I had some bad news and was somewhat teary, and crying is never great for running. I pushed ahead anyway, and then had trouble with my timing app, Intervaly. It often crashes when I get a notification from another program, and I ought to experiment with different apps but my phone often doesn't have enough memory to cope with switching, so I'm not sure how much this problem is fixable. Anyway, I spent some of the run faffing about restarting my timer, and much of it not really trusting that I'd get the signal to end my run intervals. I came out with a pace of 8'45'' /km, and feeling I was probably capable of doing week 2 a bit faster than that.
Then I was travelling for work in a pattern that meant I couldn't reasonably run until today. I just horribly messed up the pacing. I started out way too fast and completely collapsed part way through the second interval. I took a full rest break (standing still until I could breathe comfortably, no walking) and then attempted the last four intervals at my comfortable distance pace. The 'average' was still 8'45'' but I think that's a bit meaningless when it's two very fast intervals, a rest and then four slow intervals.
I'm not sure what's best to do at this point. Try once more and see if it works any better next time is probably the first step. My worry is that if I run the intervals fast enough to get the benefit of doing short, intense intervals, then 2 minutes isn't actually enough for me to recover. But it might get better with practice; C25K is set up so that the first time you try a new workout you are supposed to find it tough. If I try three week 2 runs and I'm still struggling, I can either go for longer walking breaks between my 90 second runs, or I can try alternating fast running intervals with slow running intervals for a bit.
