Couch to 5k

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).

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 took a risk today and ran outdoors, because the weather forecast said 9 degrees which is on the cold side for my lungs, but it was gloriously sunny and I wanted to be outdoors so much more than I wanted to faff about trying to get a one-off pass for the gym. So I ran paying attention to my lungs and keeping to a pace I knew I could cope with, rather than trying to push myself. All along the guided busway which is actually nearly as nice as the river, and easier because it's just plain flat path with plenty of room to pass other joggers and cyclists.

I bought myself a Garmin Forerunner 10 GPS watch as a reward for passing the 40 minute 5K mark. And then it was winter so this is the first time I've taken it out. Watch was cheap on eBay cos it is pink and sexism means pink watches are worth less than exactly the same equipment in red or black. The instructions it came with showed as much detail as I needed to charge it, switch it on and just go, plus a link to a full manual on the internet, which I think is almost certainly the right way to do things.

Definitely more comfortable wearing a slightly chunky wrist-watch than carrying my over-sized mobile phone for tracking. I hadn't got it set up to give me any audio cues, but I didn't find glancing at the dial was distracting or awkward; it's nicely clear to read. I also didn't want to fiddle with the settings or I would just have procrastinated from going out. So I looked at it after 3 minutes or so and found that I'd covered 0.25, so I guessed that was probably miles rather than km, and slowed down a tad because it was supposed to be a slow, gentle run.

According to the watch I did 3 miles in 37'45'', which by my calculations is slightly under 8'/km, so I wasn't even that slow, considering I was babying my lungs. Generally felt like a good run. I slightly miss Runkeeper's detailed breakdown of how my pace varied over the run, and its audio cues, but it looks like I can set up the watch to do intervals or pace checks or "lap" notifications, and if I am willing to connect it to an online account I can get more details there. So I think the watch has the entire featureset I need, so I feel vindicated in choosing the entry level model of a good brand, rather than going for something cheaper but with more features. I will report back when I've played with it a bit more, including switching it to display km.