liv: oil painting of seated nude with her back to the viewer (body)
[personal profile] liv
So 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.
liv: oil painting of seated nude with her back to the viewer (body)
[personal profile] liv
So I did C25K back in autumn 2012 (when I started the community with [personal profile] rmc28). And I managed to keep up regular running until I moved house in spring 2014. I was running a bit for 2 years after that, but never really got back to it being an established habit, and I kind of stopped by summer 2016. It was never a deliberate decision, I just... didn't get round to it, and than it had been months and then a year and I never had the motivation to start again.

This spring my partners' 9yo wanted to participate in a virtual Harry Potter race, and that was my motivation to restart training. I trained for a month and then did a Parkrun, and it turned out that a month was not enough training; Parkrun was a disaster. The least I can say for myself is that I got back in the saddle: I've continued running 3X a week since the Parkrun. But I'm flailing about and not making any progress and it's a bit miserable. So, partly inspired by [personal profile] angrboda I have decided to restart the C25K programme properly.

Today was week 1, run 1. I did the whole thing at 8'/km, which is about as fast as I ever run, even though I was spending more time walking than running. I found a pace that I can sustain for 8 lots of one minute, so that was really pleasing. I have been running along the guided busway which is straight and flat with few distractions like having to cross roads. Also there's a convenient 2.5 km section between Histon and Milton Road, so running along that and back is a nice 5K track.

Tech: I used Intervaly for the timing, which just beeps at you at intervals you pre-set. And Runkeeper for the distance measurement. I didn't listen to music or an audio book because with short intervals I can't really focus. I might go back to having something to keep my brain occupied as a I get further through the programme, though.
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