Couch to 5k

I didn't manage my goal of convincingly running for 25 minutes at 8½' /km. My second and third week 7 runs were much less good than the first one, hard work and slow. I felt I improved from 7.2 to 7.3 but the numbers didn't reflect that.

Then my life exploded the way it always does in September and I missed a couple of weeks. I decided to restart by seeing if I could run 30 minutes slowly, and yes I could. Second run again felt a bit less of a struggle but within the limits of measurement was the same pace and distance. My third, so-called "graduation" run was somewhat let down by Zombies, Run! being screwy. It didn't think I had covered 1 km until well over 10 minutes into the run, though by known markers on the route I was pretty sure I had. Then when I looked at the splits it claimed I'd run the first km in under 8½ minutes, but the overall average pace it reported was considerably slower than any of the splits, which is not how averages work. My best estimate is slightly slower than 9' /km.

Today I went back to running in 5 minute intervals, and managed pretty much 9' /km exactly. Pacing was a bit off; each interval was slower than the last. But I felt like I had a good workout and challenged myself in a different way from running slowly for the whole 30 minutes.

So I don't know. I was hoping that going all the way through the C25K programme again would produce real improvements, but I'm still running at about the same pace I was before I went back to the formal incremental programme. And even that not reliably; easily a quarter of my runs are much slower than that for no very obvious reason. On the positive side, I can do something which I couldn't do at the start of the summer, namely run for 30 minutes continuously with no walking breaks. And I think, though I'm not completely sure, that my overall fitness is better, which is most of the point.

And we're past the equinox and rapidly running out of daylight, so I need a new plan if I'm going to keep this up. I think I need to join the gym at work and go back to running on treadmills.

Many thanks to everybody who comments with encouragement, and posts about your own C25K experiences. This community definitely helps.

I completed week 5. I'm really proud of that, because the ramp up from 5 minutes continuous running to 20 minutes is the steepest part of the C25K curve. It took me slightly more than a week since I couldn't get out for several days (due to life reasons more than laziness, at least).

Run 1 with 5 minute intervals, 9½'/km. Run 2 with 8 minute intervals I have absolutely no measurement for since Zombies, Run! crashed after three minutes, and I thought I'd restart it once I got to the walking interval, and it crashed again so I tried restarting my phone, which then spent a very scary amount of time failing to boot. So I did two lots of 8 minutes which I didn't measure, with a very long gap in between while I tried to coax my phone out of its sulk. Phone is ok now, and I wasn't going for speed anyway, I was just trying to see if I could complete the two long intervals on a very hot day, and I could.

And today, the weather is finally bearable, and I ran a continuous 20 minutes at 9' 22'' /km. I didn't feel bad at all by the end, so I think I could have gone either further or maybe even a bit faster. I think if I manage to complete the whole 9 weeks I will in fact be a bit faster than the roughly 9½'/km I was running at the start, in 5 minute intervals. I was hoping to be somewhat faster by the middle of the programme, but then I have covered most of it during a very long heatwave, so probably wasn't building up speed as much as I might.

Also I have run exactly 50 km since I restarted using Zombies, Run! which is pleasing.

I managed to forget to put my running shoes on when I went out and ran in my normal shoes. They're soft-soled trainer-like things, so hopefully haven't wrecked my feet and ankles too badly. But anyway I didn't even notice until the end of the run, so hopefully it didn't have many consequences.

I tried Week 4, with the aim of just completing it and not worrying too much about pace. The weather has got a lot more pleasant, warm but not unbearably hot. I switched back to Zombies Run because my problem with longer intervals is more often boredom than needing to concentrate. And I did complete the whole workout, and it felt reasonably comfortable, and ZR recorded my pace as a little over 9' /km, which is fine because I expected to be a bit slower and anyway ZR seems to be a bit more pessimistic than Runkeeper.

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.

Well, so much for my grand plans of increasing my pace interval to 20 minutes today. Everything about this evening was a struggle, and I think it was really my lungs not cooperating, rather than just being lazy. I just about pushed myself to run 10 minutes at 8 kph, then a 5 minute walking recovery, and a second 10-minute run. So that was fairly miserable, but I hope it's keeping my fitness up.

I ran two lots of 15 minutes at 8 kph today, walking breaks in between, and completed the 5K in 39½ minutes. I feel like I'm getting over the hump and I probably am capable of running the whole distance at my new pace. But I'll keep on incrementing gradually, I'll try for 17½ minute running intervals next time.

The Zombies! Run plot is getting pretty exciting (up to S2 mission 14). I just wish it weren't so hard to hear Archie when she's such a major character.

I listened to rmc28's sensible advice and stopped feeling guilty about taking walking breaks at the moment. Having dragged myself out in the sleet and darkness to get to the gym, I ran 10 minutes at 8 kph and recovered for 5 minutes by walking, then did that a second time, then ran for a couple of minutes at the end at pace because I wasn't struggling so much with the recovery as on Monday. So that gives me 3.7 km in 30 minutes.

My lungs are feeling a lot better, I think I'm getting my fitness back or getting over minor respiratory crud. I think I will try going back to running slowly in my recovery intervals instead of walking, but still stick to 30 minutes rather than the full 5K.

The Christmas break I managed to run twice in three weeks, which is not great, but the main reason is that the middle of Christmas was the wrong time to sort out ways to run when I'm in Cambridge and it's too cold outside. I was doing really a pretty decent amount of walking, at least a mile every day, walking into town and back most days, which is between 40 minutes and an hour each way depending on where in town, so I hoped I was maintaining my fitness at least somewhat. The first week back at work running just didn't happen; I hiked up a big hill on Sunday, and played a bit of Ingress (which is really good for making sure I'm not completely sedentary even when I don't have time to run), but other than that, having got out of the routine I couldn't make myself start again.

So today I dragged myself out, just barely. It was sleety and dark and horrible even just walking to the gym, which didn't help. I left it to the last possible minute to be able to leave the house and get a run in by a reasonable time in the evening, which is the last day I can run and get a second run (let alone a third) in within the week.

I wasn't feeling great, a bit coldy, but I told myself, if I keep saying I'm "sick" when it's this minor I'll never restart my regular running. That may have been a mistake, because in fact my lungs really weren't coping with running. I hope that's incipient cold and not that all my fitness has evaporated in the past month. So I did intervals of 5 minutes at 8 kph and 5 minutes walking, which on the one hand should be easy for me, but on the other was putting me pretty close to getting asthma, so I think that was a reasonable compromise between giving up too easily and pushing myself too hard. 3.5 km in 30 minutes.

Ended up having to postpone my run by a day again, due to a work crisis yesterday evening. So I won't fit in a third run this week, which is partly because in the cold weather I don't have a good way of running at weekends when I'm in Cambridge.

Today I moved up from running at 8 kph for 1 km, to running at 8 kph for 10 minutes. And that was doable, with recovery intervals of 7.5 minutes at 7 kph. That gave me a total time of 39'37'', trivially faster than the previous run, but with 25 minutes at the faster pace instead of 23.5 minutes, and longer sustained runs. So I think that's a meaningful improvement.

My lungs were ok but my calves started aching a bit towards the end. It's always interesting when I get to a level where my speed is limited by my muscles more than my lungs. Hopefully more alternating 5K runs with fast C25K intervals will continue to build up my strength, though.

Next time I think maybe 1.5 km fast sections, which should take only a bit longer than 10 minutes at this pace.

Today I tried running at 8 kph, and that definitely is too fast to be sustainable for me still, it wasn't just a case of don't wanna. So I did alternating kilometres, 1K at pace and 1K at 7 kph. That felt about the right amount to push myself for now, and gave me a total time of just under 40 minutes. I think next time I will try to do 10 minute intervals, which at this pace is quite a bit more than kilometres, but it's a reasonable increment to aim for, I think.