Week B days 2 and 3

[liv]

I'm doing moderately well at keeping up my running habit over Christmas! Boxing day I did my day 2, 5 km of alternating 5 mins walking with 10 mins running, in the Lancashire village where jack's grandfather lives. It's kind of the foothills of the Lake District and I wasn't sure there'd be anywhere flat enough to run (I am no way fit enough to run up 1 in 5 hills...) but the family found me a nice flat path along the river. Not quite long enough for my 5 k run, but I went back and forth a few times and then on a little loop round the village to complete the distance.

I was really slow, a few seconds over 50 minutes for 5 km, which is back at walking pace again. I was on an unfamiliar path and it's the first time I've done 5 actual kilometres in "real life". jack didn't want to run but came out to cheer me on and was mostly pacing me while walking!

The next plausible opportunity I had to run was this morning, when I managed to grab the opportunity of some sunshine to run the path with the BRCA1 sequence, which starts from near my parents' place and covers a mile towards the hospital. My day 3 run is 36 minutes continuously, extending the run beyond the end of the gene sequence stripes to cover approximately 4.4 km total. I had to estimate the distance by drawing on a Google map (I use walkjogrun.net but they're all much of a muchness), cos Runkeeper couldn't find any GPS signal.

If that distance is accurate it's my best pace yet, which might be true as I only counted the actual running part, the warmup and cooldown being a bit long as I had to walk half a mile along the main road to get to the start of the path. I don't quite want to celebrate a record when the distance is so approximate, but it was certainly my longest continuous run yet. And generally felt comfortable and enjoyable, running by the railway across the fields behind Addenbrokes, the sun shining and the church bells pealing.

And that's not quite three runs in a week, but it's three runs in 8 days, which is better than I was expecting given that I'm all over the place this week :-)

Comments

[rmc28]

You ran 5k! Wooooot.

[liv]

Well, not entirely, I ran 3k in three very slow intervals and walked 2k! But thanks so much for the cheering anyway. It's still something I had no idea I'd be able to do until I went through the C25K system.

I'm more proud of today's 4.4 km of actual running, continuously and at a decent pace, in some ways. I think I'm actually fairly close to 5 km in 40 minutes; I might be able to manage that Week C day 3, as I'm due to extend my time from 36 minutes to 40 and if I can keep up a similar pace to today that should be 4.8 or 4.9 or something. Close, anyway, and maybe I can just stretch to a tiny bit faster... If not, then 5 km in 44 minutes for Week D day 3 should be very attainable.

[ceb]

Well done for managing to fit this in over Christmas! It's always a difficult time to keep habits up what with all the holidays and so on.

[liv]

Thank you! rmc28 and naath have been inspiring me, as well as not wanting to lose the fitness I've gained in the weeks leading up to Xmas.