Couch to 5k

In my programme, the last run of week 6 and all of week 7 involve running continuously for 25 minutes. The first time I did that I measured a pace of about 9½'/km, and when I tried again today my GPS gave me nonsense readings but estimating based on my knowledge of the path I wasn't much worse than 8½'/km. I would like to confirm that as a real time, and I have two more week 7 runs to do that. But I definitely did go further than the first time I tried the 25 minute run.

I'm inclined to skip week 8 because I'm pretty confident I can go from 25 minutes to 30 minutes without too much trouble. And it would be really nice if I can keep that to a pace under 9'/km, but we'll see. There seems to be a lot of random-ish variation from one run to the next.

My phone broke so I couldn't properly measure my runs for a while. I decided the best plan was to do some 'free' running until I could get the phone fixed. I did a couple of 20 minute runs, and felt like I was improving, getting just a little further in the 20 minutes each time. And I tried running home from work one day, but that went pretty badly; I can run in my normal work shoes, but running in a skirt rather than leggings is a bit grim, and it was very hot and I was tired and the route was unfamiliar, so I only managed 10 minutes.

Today I got back to my old Zombies, Run! set-up, and tried the first workout of week 6. Week 6 is the weird one where you go back to intervals after completing the long run in week 5. The NHS programme I'm using says 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 5 minutes, but it suggests an 8 minute walking break after the middle run. That sounded pointless to me; I'm as recovered as I'm going to be after 5 minutes of walking. So I swapped it round and did 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 8 minutes, with a 5 minute break between the two long intervals.

I managed that short interval at the start decently fast, covering the first KM in 8½ minutes even though some of that was walking. Then I was a bit slower for the two long intervals, and ended up doing 3 km in 28 minutes, so an overall pace of 9'20'' per km. Part of me wants to try that again and see if I can improve the pace a little, but it's probably most sensible to go on to the second workout which is just two lots of 10 minutes.

Week 4 run 2: Zombies Run recorded completely silly times for me, which is always annoying because I like getting my 'scores'. I think I was probably slowish as it was another really hot run.

Week 4 run 3: Zombies Run gave me a sensible overall result for the whole run: 2.8 km in 24 minutes, or 8'44'' /km. I believe that as it's a bit faster than the first time I tried this workout, but not ludicrously fast. But the rubbish timing last time makes me unsure, as does the fact that the splits did not make any sense, claiming I ran 3 km in under 3 minutes by zigzagging about all over the place. Which apart from being obviously wrong is inconsistent with a final distance of under 3 km in over 20 minutes.

I don't want to give up ZR because I'm enjoying the story and finding that it helps a lot with motivation to keep going and not just clock-watch, which I need at this stage of the programme.

I also got my boyfriend cjwatson into Zombies Run. He's also acquired the same piece of kit as me: a headband with built-in Bluetooth headphones. That is way more comfortable for running than in ear headphones, and doesn't advertise the fact that you can't hear like over ear headphones. The sound quality isn't amazing but I'm pleased with it. So I mentioned to him that I have a themed playlist which contains songs about zombies and other undead / the apocalypse / running away, most of them with a fast beat except I couldn't resist Zombie by The Cranberries.

In case anyone is interested: Zombie music.

Next week: 3 X 5 minutes for the start of Week 5. I feel reasonably confident about that.

So I tried week 3 a second time, and didn't at all think I was going particularly slowly, or struggling, but I ended up with a pace of 9'24'' /km instead of the 8'47'' I'd managed two days before. I know one shouldn't over-analyse, but that one threw me for a loop, not because I'm upset that I had a slow run, but because I lost all confidence in my ability to judge how fast I'm going.

The next time I went out, I decided to do something different. I ran 1 km continuously (conveniently the distance from my house to my boyfriend's house), and then stopped to have a cup of tea with BF and ran the 1 km back. Just over 10 minutes each way, but that's the first time since I restarted running that I've actually managed a continuous kilometre at all, so I'm quite pleased with that. Also I expect I'll be at least a bit faster when it's not 30 degrees and humid.

Today we had Actual! Clouds! and I ran week 3, plus a third repeat of the 90 seconds + 3 minutes pattern, at a pace of 8'31'' /km. I am not surprised that I went a bit faster in the cooler weather, but I didn't think I was at anything like the fastest pace I've recorded in a month. So apparently I can not begin to tell the difference between an 8½ minute average pace and a 9½ minute average pace, but at least I'm picking up speed again.

This means I'm done with with the very short sprint intervals, and I move on to Week 4. I am a bit nervous about only getting 90 seconds of rest; I usually find I don't really recover in 90 seconds. If it's too hard for me I might extend the walking intervals somewhat.

It's still very hot. Today I ran trivially faster than the last time I tried the standard Week 2 run, within the error of measurement exactly the same pace and distance. But this time the whole thing felt a bit better. The first couple of intervals were only a little faster than the later ones, and I didn't feel like keeping going for 90 seconds was a horrible ordeal. I think I'm ready to move up to Week 3, and I think that's going to do me more good than trying to get the pace for Week 2 under 8½' /km.

jack came out with me but this time he was aiming for a longer continuous run at a faster pace than I could keep up with. Which meant I walked back to our start point on my own to wait for him. Two (separate) annoying jerks decided to hit on / harass me, at least they didn't do it while I was concentrating on running but only during the cooldown. And they were annoying rather than threatening, but really, I could do without.

Went out with jack, managed to find a pace where I was pushing myself but could just barely manage the 6 x 90 second intervals. Overall average pace just over the 8½' /km, so that's an improvement. jack ran alongside me and then carried on for another 10 minutes while I was getting my breath back.

I was feeling a bit off today, maybe an incipient cold or just even worse allergies. Or maybe it was psychological because I'd committed myself to doing a whole half hour. I wasn't sure whether I should cry off, or cut the run short. I decided to keep going, which I think was a good decision.

I wasn't able to repeat the fast pace I'd managed the first two runs, but I did complete the whole 30 minutes with 1 minute running intervals. My overall pace was slower at 8'45'' /km, but faster than the 9 to 9½ minutes I'd been running when I was doing 5 minute intervals. And I came away feeling, that was hard but I did it, rather than having to deal with the set-back of giving up.

Plan for the weekend: run 1 of week 2, and see if I can keep going for the whole 90 seconds at a pace where I'm really pushing myself.

So I did C25K back in autumn 2012 (when I started the community with 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 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.

I should get back into the habit of posting about every run I do, I find it motivating. But anyway, second half of June has been frustrating. I have had a couple of runs hovering around the 9'/km, which is ok but I was hoping to improve at least a bit now I'm back to regular running on hills.

Part of the reason I've plateau'd at the moment is that I'm only managing two-ish runs per week and I don't really improve unless I keep up 2½-3 runs a week. And part is that conditions have been horrible, sometimes on the edge of too cold for me even though it's June, and sometimes too hot and sticky. The worst is that at this time of year, especially in the evening, I keep breathing in tiny insects, blech.

So yes, I've done a few runs of 3.3 or 3.4 km in half an hour, and a few where I just couldn't finish, I did 20 minutes either as two sets of 10 with a walking break, or continuously but very slowly and completely unable to manage the last third. Today was a bit better, I wasn't pushing myself for speed but I felt comfortable rather than miserable throughout, and had no problem doing the full 30 minutes.

Of course today my Runkeeper app decided to be entirely useless. For one thing it couldn't find GPS properly, which is always annoying, but on top of that it was giving me nonsense data and telling me I was running 6½ minute kilometres, LOL. And it kept auto-pausing for no obvious reason. And it decided to give me timepoints at apparently random times and distances, instead of the five minutes and 1 km intervals I set it for. So it wasn't even useful for the audio cues to allow me to keep track of timings and keep motivated.

I couldn't even guess my final distance, because I managed to run past the local primary school just at hometime, so I took a shortcut through the student residences rather than trying to run through the milling crowds of parents and kids. So a slightly unfamiliar route and one with a bunch of twisty paths meaning I can't map it easily. I reckon it was somewhere around 3.4 km total, I would be surprised if it were substantially faster than that based on how it felt and how fast I was going for the parts I am familiar with. I mean, I know where the 1 km imaginary waypoint is, it happens to be at a corner, and I did that in under 9 minutes, so I at least started a tad faster than sometimes recently.

May was more or less a wash-out, partly cos I was away some of the time, partly because I was disorganized, and once I got out of the habit of running regularly I put off starting again. I was very grateful to jack for encouraging me to go out this weekend.

We managed to pick the exact hour slot between rainstorms, so it was very pleasant running conditions, cool and breezy but not actually raining. We ran along the guided busway from CRC to Histon, which is a nice straightforward default.

And unlike a lot of times when I come back after a break, it was a pretty good run on the whole. My GPS watch found its signal just as I completed my warmup, which helped. I decided to run for half an hour and not worry too much about speed. In fact I did the first 500 metres in 4 minutes and felt pretty good, so that encouraged me to try to keep up that pace. It wasn't a record-breaking run but I managed to keep a pretty steady pace, in fact a smidge over the 8'/km I'm still holding as a nominal target. So 3.7 km in 30 minutes, but more importantly I never felt as if I was struggling to breathe, or found it difficult to motivate myself to keep going, I just kept going, enjoying the breeze on my skin and my body doing its thing.

It's really good psychologically to have a good run after a hiatus, otherwise it can be really discouraging, I find! And I'm also pleased that with a nice flat, uninterrupted path to run along, I can in fact do more or less 8 minute km even when I'm deliberately choosing to take it gently.