c25k | Recent Entries

I managed one run on holiday, on Wednesday evening, when the children were calm enough to be left with one adult while it was still daylight. I was a bit nervous in running in such a hilly place, but my genius spouse spotted the canal with towpath a short walk from our hotel, so I ran down it for 15 minutes and then back again. It was a really lovely run and my one regret was that I was only able to do the one run while we were there. I also improved my time again a little over last week's runs.

I had hoped to get a second run in on Friday evening when we were home again, but didn't quite manage it. Today I had the choice of skipping the second timed run this week, or to do it today and then hope to run Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun next week to catch up; and I did the latter.

Here I combined it with a library visit: I have a little runner's backpack and it is just big enough to hold the library books I needed to return. So I walked to the library, returned my books, picked up the two waiting for me, and ran home in a big loop to take up the 30 minutes.

It was warm (ok, it was about 18 C) and I set off too fast so I wasn't surprised to find myself going much slower a short way into the run. I mostly enjoyed the run, but it was just on the edge of too warm, and my average pace was much slower than Wednesday's canal run.

(Also I note that I need to wear a long-sleeved top under that runner's backpack - luckily it was only 30 minutes because my bare skin started rubbing raw where it brushed the straps.)

Next run will be Monday evening, hopefully a bit cooler, and will be 4.8km distance run.

rmc28

10.5km, alternating 400m intervals (and a bonus long 500m slow interval to finish).

This was definitely an exercise in persistence. For about the first 4km I wasn't enjoying it much and was shoving myself along with stubbornness and distraction (exploring a completely different footpath than the one I'd planned to). Then I began enjoying it more, as I usually do, and then the last 2km or so I was still enjoying it but feeling very tired and running out of steam. (And then I'd mucked up my route a bit so had to walk another 800m or so home from my finish point.)

With all that then, I was pleased to find I was 10s/km faster than the 8km of a fortnight ago overall, and seem to be doing better at staying slow at first and still keeping up a similar pace at the end - even though I was tired, km 10 was my second-fastest.

I'm away Mon-Fri, but running should still be possible, so I'm packing my gear with the aim of 30 min runs on Tue and Thu, and a 4.8k on Saturday when I'm back home.

rmc28

Today is warm; about the upper end of what I am comfortable running in, I think. The Computer Laboratory weather station tells me it was about 18-20C while I was running; I'm going to keep an eye on that and maybe shift to running in the evenings when lunchtimes are hotter than that.

A nice 30 minute run, and another 10s/km knocked off my average pace. I'm not quite back where I was before the break, but not far off, which is pleasing.

rmc28

30 minutes, 10x 2min running, 1 min walking. I think this is the pattern for the time-based runs for the rest of the training program now.

I didn't find it as intimidating a jump as I'd expected, and I turned in a better pace again, though I'm still starting fast and ending slow. I'd really like to get back to the few sessions where I managed to reverse that.

Same again on Friday and then a long run on Sunday. I may have to travel on Sunday (if train strikes are happening Monday), which may complicate my planning.

I am really enjoying running regularly again though: it suits me thoroughly.

rmc28

My weekly routine has changed a bit while I wasn't running, so my previous Mon-Thur-Sat schedule doesn't work so well. This week I ran Tuesday evening, Friday lunchtime, and Sunday afternoon, and I suspect Wed + Fri lunchtimes are going to be the way to go, until it gets too warm for me to run at lunchtime, when I will have to switch to evenings. At least the evenings are long and light when lunchtimes are too hot.

Runs 28 & 29 were both time-based runs of 30 minutes, alternating minutes of running and walking. My pace is still well down from before the break, but improved noticeably between these two. Run 30 was a distance-based run of 3.2km, alternating 400m of running and walking.

Next week the time-based runs change to 2 min running for every 1 of walking - this will be a bit of a jump now after only a week back on the training plan, but would probably be fine if I'd been training continuously for the last 10 weeks. The distance run is 10.5km and I intend to go and explore further along that bridleway I found last week.

faesdeynia

Today I conquered the workout I was doing when I had that terrible run on Sunday. I won't lie, I was scared! I even considered giving up for all of 10 seconds, before I realized I'd just have to start over. . . again. Today the weather was cold, about 70F and periodic drizzle. But I went anyway, and was grateful for the rain and drippy trees. They helped cool me off while I was running, and I did great! Just run that workout two more times, and I'll be ready for the full 5k workout.

I think the best thing about this program is that it's taught me how to deal with the unexpected while running. Truthfully, most of the unexpected situations are expected, after a while. A little rain? No need to panic, it'll be okay; I'm wet anyway from the sweat. Stitch in the side? It's not a disaster, just slow down a little bit for a few minutes. I recovered from a stitch today and I felt great that I managed to do that without panicking :-D

faesdeynia

I had a shitty, shitty run today. I'm in week 7 - and I've sailed through everything else so far. This week is 3x12minutes with 3 minute walks in between. I tanked at minute 10 of the second interval, and walked the rest of the way home. I felt awful. There were a lot of factors.

I was running mid-day, which I never do, and the sun was brutal; hardly any shade and nary a breeze to boot. It only got to 85F today, but the humidity was in the 80's% as well. I wasn't well hydrated - halfway through my first interval my mouth was already getting gummy. My stomach was being touchy. I also started pushing my pace more than I should have. I've been around 5MPH and often I don't realize how my pace has crept up. After I stopped running, I walked home and actually made it right at the end of the workout. All told I traveled 5k (3.2 miles) but walked almost the entire second half of it.

Over the last 10 hours, I put down over 1/2 gallon of fluid + electrolytes, plus several glasses of iced tea with dinner, and I finally had a decent pee and am feeling truly better. I'll be trying again tomorrow or Tuesday after work, weather permitting. The forecast is thunderstorms from here to the end of the month, it seems like (can't complain too much, given the drought.)

My friend is giving me a free treadmill :-) So that's awesome, should be good for when the weather creeps over 90F and it's particularly nasty during the day.

angrboda

The only thing more annoying than random strangers offering random unasked for opinions on what you are doing is when you come home and look it up and discover they were right. *grumble*

Still though. I did week four for the third time today and while last time was difficult, today was fairly easy. In spite of aforementioned random stranger's random unsolicited opinion, which she stopped me in order to give, I was actually two seconds faster than previously fastest time. Woot! I feel fairly ready to take on week five actually, but I'm going to do week four one or two more times, I think. It all depends on how brave I feel next week. If I don't feel brave, it'll be more of week four.

Leveling up to week five is also the time when I need to decide what my actual running goal is. I've already proven that I can train myself up to 5K, but I will happily admit that I never got to the point of not finding it tremendously difficult to make it all the way through. The little route I'm currently using is about 3.5K, so the question is, do I want to go up on the 5K route or do I want to just continue to do the small route for a while and give the podcasts a pause once I can do that one.

I'm undecided. Doesn't really make much difference, because I can just change it up or down again if I change my mind, but I need to at least have an idea of what I'm aiming for. It's a motivation thing.

rmc28

Yes, it's been nearly two months, between illness and election campaigning.

This was 8k, alternating running and walking. 8k is a bit long for jumping back in, but I was pretty certain that I'd maintained a lot of my fitness by campaigning, and it turned out to be fine. All I really cared about was getting to run again, and completing the distance. I did that, and yes my pace was down and my pacing was off in the usual way (too fast at the start, too slow at the end), but I got the goal I cared about. I enjoyed it all too, which is always a bonus.

I took a diversion off my planned route when I found a bridleway I'd not noticed before. It goes under the dual carriageway and allegedly ends up at Milton Country Park, but I hadn't reached anywhere I recognised before my turnaround point. I'd like to explore it further on future long runs, I think.

Next run: probably Monday lunchtime, although I think I'm on a training course at work. Might have to be Monday evening.

faesdeynia

My running buddy asked me what my goal was, and I replied "to run a 5k". He said, "you can already run a 5k, I guarantee it." I replied that I thought he was full of crap, and he offered to pace me the next run we did, and see how far we got. Lo and behold, on Sunday, we ran 4 miles (6.4k) and I only had to walk a few minutes in between! It took us about an hour. We averaged 17:30/mile, so certainly a slow run. But, nonetheless, it was running.

I revised my goal to, "a 5K in under 40 minutes". I'm still a novice and I still need to finish the program.

Leading up to that, I did two runs with 4-minute intervals, and a run with 6 minute intervals. I actually did the 6-minute segment on Friday evening, and I had run on Thursday as well. I wasn't sure if I was overdoing it, but with my arm messed up, my entertainment options are limited :-/ I can't knit, crochet, play video games (for very long) or cook much. (I'm doing keto as well, which has done a lot to teach me that I'm an emotional eater, and a boredom eater.)

So, I went running two days in a row. It didn't seem to give me an issue, but I got home today and really, really wanted to go. However, I don't want to fall into the trap of doing too much too fast.

faesdeynia

So I restarted C25K a few weeks ago - I didn't make it through the program (again), but I'm trying again anyway. I'm up to week 4. This time, I have a (human) running buddy/co-worker that I meet up with every Sunday; he's a much better and more accomplished runner than I, and it's nice to have someone to learn from. For Sunday, we just go out; no routines or specified pattern, just running till I'm tired and then walking till I'm ready to go again. While running should seem pretty elementary, apparently there are bunches of ways to do it wrong.

Apparently I run way, way too fast on the running portions; apparently my legs aren't supposed to feel like they're going to give out on me by the end of it. At least, not at my current weight and ability level. He suggested I scale my pace back; when I complained that I felt like I was going nowhere, he pointed out that the difference between 5mph and 4mph is the difference between quitting and finishing. So this week, I am really, really focused on keeping a slow, sustainable pace. If I get very winded, I slow down - pride be damned.

It really paid off! I sailed through today's run (4 minute jogs/1 minute walks) easily. I am pretty excited.

My preferred exercise is lifting, but my right arm is messed up with cubital and carpral tunnel, as well as an irritated ligament in my elbow; so for now, I'm banned from lifting, which means I'll be mostly focused on running for the next few months.

angrboda

For my birthday recently my sister-in-law sent me a pulse watch. Just a cheapish one. At least I hope it's a cheap one, as that's what I asked for. I wanted it to see if I even like using such a thing, so definitely don't need anything super-advanced and expensive.

It gives me a far more accurate way of timing myself when running, so that's excellent.

The pulse monitor is one of those where you press a button and then place your finger on a sensor on top of the watch and then it uses some sort of UV technology, I believe, to measure pulse. I had rather imagined something that could monitor pulse continually while running and then give me an average and a maximum afterwards. Research shows that this was not really possible in the price range I had asked for, so I will adapt. I'll just have to measure it myself a couple of times during.

Unfortunately it has turned out to be difficult to do so while moving, as moving makes it impossible to keep my finger still on the sensor. This lead to some wildly inaccurate measurements. After three minutes of running, for example, I seemed to have a pulse of around 58 beats per minute, which... If I believed for a moment that was true, I'd be on my way to the doctor right now! So in order to measure pulse properly, I'll have to ignore Evil Laura's insistance to not stop moving and stand still for a minute while measuring. Not ideal, but it'll have to do. I can cope with that.

Even with stopping a couple of times during today's run, I still came home with the second-fastest time. Slower only than the fastest by two seconds. If I hadn't had to stop for a minute a couple of times during, I would have been way faster than the fastest. Pretty cool that, I think!

All in all, it went pretty well today. I had a hard time getting around to going but once I got started, I started trying to pay attention to my footfalls and such, and what would happen if I tried to take slightly quicker steps instead of trying to make them longer. The third three minute run was over way faster than I expected it. I felt like I had just started when Evil Laura said there were 60 seconds to go. I think I can go up to week 4 soon.

All in all, I think I'm getting on well with this watch. It'll take a good amount of getting used to as I don't normally wear a watch, so I had a bit of trouble at first not being distracted by the funny heavy object on my arm, but I can definitely see myself upgrading to something rather more sophisticated in the future when I'm more experienced.

liv

Ugh, I've got out of the habit of posting here, and partly out of the habit of running too. I was ill for a couple of weeks, and there was Passover and Easter which threw things off a bit. But I'm trying to return to my habit. Thank you

angrboda for keeping things going here, it's really motivating to see your posts and helps me feel less bad about being away for a while.

Before I got ill I did in fact manage my full 30 minutes at 8 kph, and was hoping to build that up to 5K in 37.5 minutes fairly easily. But it was not to be. On the plus side the weather has finally got warm enough for me to go back to running outside, which is always so much nicer!

I've done a few runs with my friend

ghoti, who is following C25K under the coaching of her extremely dedicated and very speedy six-year-old daughter. So we did Week 5 day 1 together, covering 3.1 km in 25 minutes with 5 minute running intervals. I felt good that that I wasn't much slower overall than my typical pace for continuous running. Week 5 day 2, which is two lots of 8 minutes running, was a bit awkward, partly because our coach's three-year-old brother came along and partly cos we ended up running in residential streets and had to keep stop-starting to cross roads or turn back from dead ends. My watch, which was set to autopause, recorded it as 1.9 km in 18 minutes, which doesn't make entire sense but it was probably somewhere around that pace.

Then I had my first attempt this spring at running in the roads at the back of campus. It wasn't a good run at all, possibly cos I've lost fitness with running rather more sporadically in the past month, possibly cos I've forgotten how to do hills. I was really really struggling, and cut my intended 5K short to 30 minutes, in which time I covered 3.5 km, and my breathing was never good.

Today I ran along the guided busway, nice and flat and straight. I was still finding it hard going but my GPS watch was pacing me at a fairly steady 7.5 kph, which is acceptable. Again, I cut it short to 30 minutes as I'd just run out of oomph, but I covered 3.8 km in that time, which is a bit more the sort of pace I'd hope for.

It's very nice conditions for running at the moment, sunny but not too bright, pleasantly cool and breezy. I hope it lasts, I don't want to go back to the treadmill more than I can help. And if I can get back into a regime of three times a week and get my speed and fitness back up, so much the better.

I'm enjoying running with my GPS watch, which I bought towards the end of last year to celebrate my 40 minute 5K milestone, and then didn't get to use for ages because it was too cold for me to run outside. It's nice to wear a watch and put a front door key in the pocket of my leggings and otherwise be completely unencumbered. I've had a bit of trouble with the thing not finding GPS for a while; I think the issue is that when that happens with my phone I can just reboot it and it usually gets a lock straightaway, but there's no way to stop the watch from carrying on with a fruitless search. So far I haven't had a problem with losing the signal once it has found GPS though.

Although it is good to be just concentrating on my running with no distractions, it's also a bit boring, and sometimes not having any distractions means I concentrate too much on my discomfort instead of ignoring it. So I might think of combining the watch with a small mp3 player so I at least have music, even if I carry on leaving my oversized phone with its clever running apps behind.

Current Mood: okay

angrboda

Phew, I haven't been out since... the end of March. Last time I should have been out I decided that Certain Female Issues and the discomfort (and pain) this involves is permitted reason to not do exercises. Immediately following that bit of unpleasantness I spent the majority of the Easter holiday with a cold, and so decided I'd be better off spending what energy I had on getting better rather than spending it all on making myself feel worse.

So today was the first time doing anything at all in oh about a week and a half.

It was a running day (obviously, hence writing it here) and before my little involuntary break I had got to week two with 90 seconds running and 2 minutes walking. I initially thought it might be best to go back to week one just this first time, but eventually decided I couldn't be bothered to switch the podcasts around on my ipod. I decided I would just see how I got on with the week two one and if I couldn't do the full 90 seconds, then at least I could do as much as possible of them.

Turns out it wasn't even a problem, though. I did fine, although a bit slower than usual, and as a bonus my shins felt better as well. They had been giving me a bit of trouble before, being a bit sore and all. Not sore in the 'oh no shin splints!' way, but more in the sort of 'we're not used to this, what are you doing? Stahp!' way (although I was and am obviously still paying special attention to it. Don't really want it to turn into shin splints).

Still, I'll have to repeat this week a few more times before moving on, though.

angrboda

Running day. Still doing week 2, so it was the second go at that level.

I tried to put some variation into the runs today, speedwise. There were six running bits in all, and I tried to do every second one at a slowish pace and every other one faster.

This lead to a surprising discovery! Slower is not actually easier at all.

The slow runs were easy on the lungs and breathing, but they all quickly gave me lead-legs, especially in the calf area, but also to some degree shins.

The faster runs required a lot more work from the lungs and for me to pay attention to breathing rhythm, but my legs felt fine.

I have never noticed this before. I expect it has something to do with the slower runs having shorter and therefore more steps, so the leg muscles work harder.

I found it quite interesting, so I shall be playing some more with speed variation, I think.

angrboda

Went out running today and because I was feeling brave I decided to move on to week 2. What with doing bicycling on Fridays instead of running, I had initially thought that it would probably be too difficult to change up after only three runs on week 1, but it was totally fine. I did several repeats of weeks last time and I'd be surprised if I didn't have to do it again this time, but perhaps not as many as I had feared.

(RE cycling, btw, I know it's off topic for this comm, but just to report that the weekly cycle ride is having a positive effect on the soreness of my bottom. Less and less every time.)

So, week 2. Went quite well. Didn't really feel any more difficult than week 1 to be honest, except for that one day where I never got even remotely warm, so probably I could have got away with not starting all the way at the beginning.

Endomondo tells me I've burned 353 calories today. Doesn't strike me as very much. Possibly because all that walking makes me slower. Unfortunately Endomondo, when choosing the type of sport I've done, doesn't have an option for 'walking and running', but only for walking and running separately. I've put it in as running, because that's the goal, isn't it.

angrboda

Managed to now pull myself together and go and do my running. Last time, which I forgot to write about, was utterly miserable, because it was cold. It was really upside-down world with me dreading the recovery walk bits because I was freezing. It was a fairly windy day that day and, as most of the route is next to some fields, not a lot of cover, so at no point did I actually ever get warm.

It was cold today as well, so I had a little walk round the garden in the running gear first to see what it was like and decided to wear my fleece top. It's not made for running, but it was the closest thing I had to something suitable. Turned out to be both comfortable and warming. I bought that fleece at a drastically reduced price in a supermarket once on a whim, figuring if it shrunk horribly after the first wash then it wasn't much of a disaster at that price. It hasn't shrunk at all and is nice to wear. I wish I'd known that then, I'd have bought a few more. Anyway, it much improved today's run.

I think, combining running with cycling like this, I'm definitely going to have to do more repeats than last year, though.

I am also having a poke at Endomondo. Any of you people use that? Considering I still haven't found a way to have the phone with me while running (but can easily have it with me while cycling), is it worth it to get an upgraded account? I'm completely ignoring the social aspect of the site and have set as many things as I can to be visible to only me, so if social networking things are the primary perks of upgrading, it wouldn't be worth it to me.

I think I like the site, though. It does pretty much the same things as the tracking features on a magazine's website that I used last year, but feels more intuitive to use. Plus, with that other site, I frequently ran into problems with convincing it to log me in properly. The only thing that site did that I haven't found on Endomondo is tracking my running shoes. The other site had a thing where you entered your shoes on the site and then chose those shoes when logging each run, and the site would then keep track of how many kilometers those shoes had done and how many percent worn they were. Made it easier to see if they were due for replacement soon.

liv

Tuesday I got to the gym really late, so only had time for a 20 minute run before the gym closed. But I managed to do the whole thing at 8 kph, and I know from experience of going through C25K that once you can do 20 minutes continuous you can usually just keep going. 2.7 km in 20 minutes, therefore.

Which meant I was feeling confident today and went for a full 2 miles (3.2 km) at pace, so that's 2 miles in 24 minutes. Managed that without too much trouble, walked to recover for 4 minutes instead of my usual 5, and then did the last 10 minutes or so at 8 kph again. That made my time slightly faster than I've managed before, 38'43''. I think I'll try to go for 30 minutes at 8 kph next, and then build up to 40 minutes fairly fast if that goes well.

Yay progress.

Current Mood: pleased

rmc28

It's still warm here, so I switched to one of my short-sleeved running tops and was definitely more comfortable. And I kept up a nice fast pace and got my furthest yet in 30 minutes (though I did slow down in the second half). I'm enjoying this springtime weather anyway :-)

Next run: Sunday afternoon (looking at my schedule, that's less rushed than trying to fit it in on Saturday)

angrboda

Hello there, Community. No, I haven't forgotten all about you over winter, but I must admit I haven't been running either. There was ice, you see. And darkness. And ice in darkness. And basically, I'm rather a bit of a coward with these things. But today was the day I started up again. I had told my flist that if I didn't manage to get out either to run or on my bicycle, they could boo me. If I'd thought about it, I would have extended booing permission to this community as well. Let's pretend I did, just so that I can tell you that you have all successfully been cheated out of a good boo.

I've decided to change it up a bit this year and combine running with bicycling. Recent events and super-sore sit bones (ow!) have informed me that I need to get used to using the bicycle again if I don't want to spend my entire summer holiday sitting on an ice pack. So instead of three runs a week, I'd switch one of them for a bicycle ride. It will probably wreak havoc with the whole week concept of the running program, but I can deal with that.

"Now to finish off you need to warm down..."

*sigh* I'd forgotten about that. There's no such thing! Argh!

I ended up using Evil Laura and her NHS podcast again after all, and I started all the way back at square one. I had meant to see if I could find an alternative, but didn't manage to locate one that didn't just involve some other potentially awful music and at least with Evil Laura I know she's not over the top cheery and borderline patronising as one might fear others might be. My options were further limited by the fact that it has to be something I could download on my little ipod shuffle, as a phone app is not suitable for me. The phone is too big and bulky and I'd have to have it in my hand the whole time, which... No.

So week 1, day 1. 8x60 seconds runs.

It wasn't actually difficult. I've definitely lost a LOT over winter, but I'm not sure I lost all of it. The runs were generally easier than I remember them to be last year and I was definitely much faster, because the route was only just long enough, which was something I ran into (hurh-hurh-hurh did you see what I did there?) much later in the program last year.

I think some of it might also be due to a better technique starting out, remembering the various tips and tricks I learned last year and being quicker at finding a good steady pace.

Have stretched, am having some water so now all that remains to be seen is whether or not I can get this sports bra off without having Husband help me... Let's hope I can, because he's away on a course in Copenhagen so I'm home alone until Friday! O.o

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