Couch to 5k

Hello community, if anyone's still watching! I have totally fallen out of the habit of recording my runs here, and would really like to start that up again, because I think it helps me.

During the second half of September I didn't manage to run at all, because the combination of the major Jewish festivals and a couple of colds in a row meant I never had time. So Tuesday I went out for the first time in ages and had a predictably terrible time. I could barely manage running for five minutes at a time, and my overall time was slower than a good walking pace. But I thought, ok, at least I made myself restart after a break, which is always such a difficult hump to get over.

Whereas this evening I was the model of grim determination and... had the best run I've had in absolutely ages. I ran 7½ minutes and walked 5 minutes, and did 3.4 km in half an hour, which is about the fastest I ever do on the hilly terrain round here, even running continuously. I think part of what was good was the weather conditions, a lovely cool autumn evening at around sunset, and partly good pacing, I had promised myself after Tuesday that I wouldn't push myself, and in fact set a good, sustainable pace. And partly that intervals make it less psychologically daunting; in fact I think I probably could have done the whole 30 minutes, but not having to made me just that bit faster. Or it may be just fluke, but anyway, it seems like a good note to restart posting here.

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.

Still can't shake this accursed cold I picked up when travelling in August. After one attempt at running when I triggered the nastiest asthma attack I've had in years, I decided I'd better actually take a break. This has been really really frustrating. The more so since I was just about to hit a full year of successfully running several times a week and my hundredth run.

This week I decided I just have to get going again, because this is getting ridiculous. I do have some kind of respiratory crud for a large proportion of the year, it's just part of the way my lungs are generally a bit rubbish. So in the past I have always said, having a cold is not an excuse, because otherwise I'll be off running more often than I actually manage to run. But the point of this is to make myself healthier, not sicker, so I don't want to be stubborn to the point of being self-destructive.

Tuesday I was really under the weather and was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to manage running. So I walked home from work instead; I took the shorter route, which is 4.7 km instead of 5.3 km, but involves walking up a steep hill at the end. I was trying to push myself to a decent walking pace but even that wasn't really happening, I ended up with 11½'/km, which is really slow by my standards. And I can really feel that I've been essentially off exercise for two months; just a few miles of walking at a semi-brisk pace left my muscles sore and stiff for the next couple of days.

This morning I was still sniffly but somewhat better, so with great psychological effort I dragged myself out for a morning run before work. I decided to just baby my lungs and ran slowly enough that I wasn't really out of breath, and managed to keep going for the full half hour. I am aware that you're really supposed to train by running like that and just gradually build up the comfortable pace, but I'm really reluctant to do so because a "comfortable" running pace for me is about 9½'/km which is just depressingly slow. So in some ways it was good that I was being careful of my lungs. The slowness is a mixture of being out of condition and still not being really well, so I may try a few comfortable pace runs and see if I can manage to improve a little bit without pushing myself too hard.

I did actually find a good rhythm in spite of coming back after a long break. I felt I probably could have kept going at that pace for a good while, but stopped after half an hour because I needed to get to work. The other thing is, having actually completed a run and found it physically pleasant will make it a lot easier psychologically to drag myself out again next time. 3.7 km including the warm-up, not that the warm-up was a whole lot slower than the running / jogging part.