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.

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 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.

This has been an awful week in which I didn't even manage to run my minimum twice. And running is still just hard; I've been doing 10 minutes at 8 kph followed by walking intervals the last several times. Today I pushed myself to do 12½ minute running intervals instead, and it really was a push, it was right at the limit of what my lungs can do. Still, I completed it successfully, and I ran 3.8 km in 30 minutes, and I even got a bit of an endorphin buzz at the end. Onwards.

It's scarily cold out, so even just walking to the gym my lungs weren't feeling great. And the campus gym doesn't have aircon, they just open the windows a crack, so I was breathing in freezing cold air, which is the thing I was trying to avoid by running in the gym. So I wasn't sure how today would go, but actually once I got going the running was ok.

My goal was something I was fairly sure I could achieve, namely to run two lots of 17½ minutes at 8 kph. And this pace is definitely getting more doable, I was working hard but never struggling. 5-minute walking interval in between, giving me a time equal to my PR over the distance, a second under 39 minutes. I think it's still good for me psychologically to have achievable small increments at the moment, so I'll probably go up to 20 or 25 minutes next time, rather than trying to do the whole thing and risking failing.

I found running a struggle today, both getting out to the gym, and actually completing the run. I managed two lots of 12½ minutes at 8 kph, but I didn't manage to run slowly during the recovery interval, I was finding things hard enough going that I let myself walk instead. That gave me a total distance of 3.8 km in 30 minutes, which is sort of a PR except that I've done a couple of 5Ks faster than that. Anyway, progress I think.

My lungs felt somewhat better today but I didn't want to push myself too much, so I did 7½ minute intervals at 8 kph, with 5 minute walking breaks. I felt I wasn't properly recovering during the breaks, but anyway, I'll keep on being gentle with myself until I recover my fitness, I suppose.

I knew keeping up running over Christmas was going to be hard; it's mostly been too cold for me to run outside, and the Christmas / New Year week is a bad time to be poking at new gyms. So today when I saw it was at least reasonably warm outside, I decided to give it a go.

I took it slowly, I just wanted to run at all rather than trying to push myself. And I gave up after 30 minutes rather than completing the full 5K, mainly because I was bored rather than seriously not coping. But anyway, it was a run, which is better than no run, and I covered 3.7 km in 30 minutes which is non-awful for me.

Tried running 5K at 8 kph again today. I increased my pace intervals to 15 minutes instead of 1.5 km, with a 10 minute recovery interval at 7 kph, and that was doable. That gave me a total time of under 39 minutes for the distance, so a PR. And I ran a whole 2 km continuously at 8 kph, which for one thing makes me feel like I realistically say that I can run at that pace. And for another gives me my first actual unarguable 12 minute mile, so yay.

I really hope I can manage to get at least some runs in over the Christmas period, but if I can't, that felt like a satisfying note to end the year on. My attempt to build up my stamina for running 5K at 8 kph so far seems to be going better than the other half of my self-designed training programme, the one where I'm trying to redo C25K with the running intervals at 10 kph. But I expect the latter is probably helping, even if I'm finding it a struggle to get past week 3.

And the gym was nearly empty as all the students have gone home, and I was watching a buzzard wheeling and plunging in the winter sky outside the fitness room windows. Given I can't run outside at this time of year, that felt quite nice.