Couch to 5k

I should get back into the habit of posting about every run I do, I find it motivating. But anyway, second half of June has been frustrating. I have had a couple of runs hovering around the 9'/km, which is ok but I was hoping to improve at least a bit now I'm back to regular running on hills.

Part of the reason I've plateau'd at the moment is that I'm only managing two-ish runs per week and I don't really improve unless I keep up 2½-3 runs a week. And part is that conditions have been horrible, sometimes on the edge of too cold for me even though it's June, and sometimes too hot and sticky. The worst is that at this time of year, especially in the evening, I keep breathing in tiny insects, blech.

So yes, I've done a few runs of 3.3 or 3.4 km in half an hour, and a few where I just couldn't finish, I did 20 minutes either as two sets of 10 with a walking break, or continuously but very slowly and completely unable to manage the last third. Today was a bit better, I wasn't pushing myself for speed but I felt comfortable rather than miserable throughout, and had no problem doing the full 30 minutes.

Of course today my Runkeeper app decided to be entirely useless. For one thing it couldn't find GPS properly, which is always annoying, but on top of that it was giving me nonsense data and telling me I was running 6½ minute kilometres, LOL. And it kept auto-pausing for no obvious reason. And it decided to give me timepoints at apparently random times and distances, instead of the five minutes and 1 km intervals I set it for. So it wasn't even useful for the audio cues to allow me to keep track of timings and keep motivated.

I couldn't even guess my final distance, because I managed to run past the local primary school just at hometime, so I took a shortcut through the student residences rather than trying to run through the milling crowds of parents and kids. So a slightly unfamiliar route and one with a bunch of twisty paths meaning I can't map it easily. I reckon it was somewhere around 3.4 km total, I would be surprised if it were substantially faster than that based on how it felt and how fast I was going for the parts I am familiar with. I mean, I know where the 1 km imaginary waypoint is, it happens to be at a corner, and I did that in under 9 minutes, so I at least started a tad faster than sometimes recently.

Well, I'm not quite managing my planned three runs a week, but I have done at least two each week since I declared bankruptcy and restarted my habit. Couple of runs in Cambridge where it's flat. I focused on running at a steady, sustainable pace and did one run at just over 8'/km and one at just under 8'/km, so that's pleasing. The most recent I got a real buzz, actually proper giggly endorphin high, too.

On the other hand, my three runs starting from my flat, which is on the top of a hill, have been hovering around 9'/km (one just over, two just under), and all have felt like really hard work. I have changed my route a bit so that instead of running out downhill and back uphill, I run a kind of 1 km radius figure of 8 round my starting point. I can't avoid the fact that I start out downhill and return uphill, as my flat is right at the top of a hill, but this way I more or less stay on the brow of the hill and have cut out the steepest part of the descent and climb in the middle.

Mostly I'm using my GPS watch, which I'm finding to be comfortable and useful. I forgot to bring it back with me this week, though, so I went back to using Runkeeper on my oversized smartphone. I generally prefer the watch; it has the downside that it doesn't give me a detailed breakdown of my minute-by-minute speed, but it's a lot less cumbersome and I really like the fact that I can glance at the display and see how fast I'm going or how much further I have to go. The problem is that it's quite frequently unreliable at picking up a GPS signal, which is annoying. Running with the phone in a bumbag was fine too, (apart from a panic when I forgot that I'd put my keys in the bumbag and not in the pocket of my leggings, as I usually do when I'm relying on the watch).

May was more or less a wash-out, partly cos I was away some of the time, partly because I was disorganized, and once I got out of the habit of running regularly I put off starting again. I was very grateful to jack for encouraging me to go out this weekend.

We managed to pick the exact hour slot between rainstorms, so it was very pleasant running conditions, cool and breezy but not actually raining. We ran along the guided busway from CRC to Histon, which is a nice straightforward default.

And unlike a lot of times when I come back after a break, it was a pretty good run on the whole. My GPS watch found its signal just as I completed my warmup, which helped. I decided to run for half an hour and not worry too much about speed. In fact I did the first 500 metres in 4 minutes and felt pretty good, so that encouraged me to try to keep up that pace. It wasn't a record-breaking run but I managed to keep a pretty steady pace, in fact a smidge over the 8'/km I'm still holding as a nominal target. So 3.7 km in 30 minutes, but more importantly I never felt as if I was struggling to breathe, or found it difficult to motivate myself to keep going, I just kept going, enjoying the breeze on my skin and my body doing its thing.

It's really good psychologically to have a good run after a hiatus, otherwise it can be really discouraging, I find! And I'm also pleased that with a nice flat, uninterrupted path to run along, I can in fact do more or less 8 minute km even when I'm deliberately choosing to take it gently.

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.

I procrastinated on going running today but when I did go out it was actually pretty good. I feel like I'm getting back to a stage where I'm improving again. I managed the longer intervals, 2 x 17½ minutes at 8 kph, without too much trouble. That gave me a total time equal to my PR of 38'58'', and I'm not expecting to get much faster until I can actually run the full distance at pace, but that's starting to feel attainable now. And when I run at the top pace that's properly sustainable is when I'm most likely to get a post-running buzz, which indeed I did. Next mini-goal: 20 minutes continuous at 8 kph.