Couch to 5k
Apr. 11th, 2013 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSqueeeeeeeee!
I've had several lax weeks recently when I've gone jogging at most once, and mostly just tried to keep a steady speed rather than pushing myself to do more.
However, today, much to my immense surprise, I managed to keep up my usual jogging pace of 7 km/h (4.5 mph) for a whole half an hour (which I've done before, but only with effort) and by then I seemed to be getting into the swing of it, so I added another 10 or 15 minutes to the time and kept going.
When I got close to 5k, I wanted to make sure I'd done 5k even without the warm up, and when I got to 5.5k, I felt ok to keep going (and wanted to keep watching Big Bang Theory) so I kept going until 6k. I spend up for the last few minutes just to show I could.
So I did a comfortable 5.5km even without warm up time.
In a literal sense, that completely fulfils the couch-to-5K program, although it doesn't fulfil the actual schedule which has you run 5km in 30min. I didn't set out to follow it exactly, but I found the general idea of steady progress from zero to 5k a very useful outline. When I started, 7km/h was the fastest I could comfortably do, and even for a minute was difficult (I could do a couple of minutes if I pushed myself to the limit, but that was about all for a session).
Even a few hours ago, I assumed I was still months away from completing, since I wasn't following the schedule very exactly and seemed to have reached a plateau.
In a way, it feels very anticlimactic. A few months ago, I would never have believed I could have got to the point I am now. I would have felt I'd completely succeeded. But now it doesn't feel that hard, I just feel silly for not having done it years ago, like so many other people.
And I still have a very long way to go. I can run 5km at 7km/h, but in order to fulfil the the supposed schedule of couch to 5k in 30min, I have to increase that to 5km at 10km/h, and I can barely run at 10km/h for a minute at the moment.
I can see other people running twice as fast as me, and I know that's a long way to go before I can describe myself as actually running rather than jogging slowly.
But also, I've achieved something awesome that seemed impossible. If I can manage five more of those, I can have an amazing breakfast :)
I always cut gym posts because they're often very obnoxious to people who don't want to read them all, is there anything else I can do to make them less intrusive?
I've had several lax weeks recently when I've gone jogging at most once, and mostly just tried to keep a steady speed rather than pushing myself to do more.
However, today, much to my immense surprise, I managed to keep up my usual jogging pace of 7 km/h (4.5 mph) for a whole half an hour (which I've done before, but only with effort) and by then I seemed to be getting into the swing of it, so I added another 10 or 15 minutes to the time and kept going.
When I got close to 5k, I wanted to make sure I'd done 5k even without the warm up, and when I got to 5.5k, I felt ok to keep going (and wanted to keep watching Big Bang Theory) so I kept going until 6k. I spend up for the last few minutes just to show I could.
So I did a comfortable 5.5km even without warm up time.
In a literal sense, that completely fulfils the couch-to-5K program, although it doesn't fulfil the actual schedule which has you run 5km in 30min. I didn't set out to follow it exactly, but I found the general idea of steady progress from zero to 5k a very useful outline. When I started, 7km/h was the fastest I could comfortably do, and even for a minute was difficult (I could do a couple of minutes if I pushed myself to the limit, but that was about all for a session).
Even a few hours ago, I assumed I was still months away from completing, since I wasn't following the schedule very exactly and seemed to have reached a plateau.
In a way, it feels very anticlimactic. A few months ago, I would never have believed I could have got to the point I am now. I would have felt I'd completely succeeded. But now it doesn't feel that hard, I just feel silly for not having done it years ago, like so many other people.
And I still have a very long way to go. I can run 5km at 7km/h, but in order to fulfil the the supposed schedule of couch to 5k in 30min, I have to increase that to 5km at 10km/h, and I can barely run at 10km/h for a minute at the moment.
I can see other people running twice as fast as me, and I know that's a long way to go before I can describe myself as actually running rather than jogging slowly.
But also, I've achieved something awesome that seemed impossible. If I can manage five more of those, I can have an amazing breakfast :)
I always cut gym posts because they're often very obnoxious to people who don't want to read them all, is there anything else I can do to make them less intrusive?