From Couch to 5k to...who knows? About This Page:

[OhToodles!]

Way to go!! Awesome!

btw - I did Week 1 Day 1 this morning before work (5:45am) and am determined to do it MWF each week. Thanks for the motivation!

[Tinkerboo]

HOW early?!? [emoji44]

That's fantastic though, I'm so pleased to have helped inspire you (I feel all bashful now [emoji5] ). Please do post on here how you're getting on, if you'd like!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk :-)

[OhToodles!]

Originally Posted by Tinkerboo

HOW early?!? [emoji44]

That's fantastic though, I'm so pleased to have helped inspire you (I feel all bashful now [emoji5] ). Please do post on here how you're getting on, if you'd like!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk :-)

Thanks so much! And yes - it was EARLY! I think that might do me in before the running.

[Tinkerboo]

Week 6 Run 1
When: Monday 2nd June, 5.30pm
Where: Private road by 'our' beach, with Andy (doing Wk3)
Weather: Bright and sunny, quite warm
How long: 35 minutes
How far: 2.19 miles
What's the plan?: 5m (mins) warm-up walk - run 5m - walk 3m - run 8m - walk 3m - run 5m - 5m cooldown.
How'd I feel?: I know, I know - no rest day after the last one. But in my defence, I got home from work early and Andy actually suggested we go straight out. The weather was decent and as we both have lots of things to do today (Tues) it was easier to get it out of the way on Monday evening. Plus, if he was showing such an interest then I wasn't going to say no!

Somehow or other, I got the numbers mixed up in my head and thought the three runs were 8m/5m/8m, not 5/8/5...so when the first one ended I thought "hm, that was a quick 8m", then the next one "hm, this 5m is dragging on a very long time" and then the final one "hm, that finished quickly". Looked at the app at the end and realised my mistake! I was slowing down more and more towards the end of those 8m, but at least I got through it all without suffering too much - I probably shouldn't have looked at the numbers beforehand! There is one more session with intervals to go, and after that they are all straight running, gradually increasing in duration.

Andy did his first week 3, where the runs are 3m each. He said he quite noticeably felt the step up in effort, and when I was behind him I did notice his paces were getting shorter (more like mine!) so he must be having to work harder. But his achilles is still okay so that's good...though I don't know if this means he can never wear those boots again?!

[Amy L]

I got behind a couple of updates.

Awesome! I knew you could do this!!

[Amy L]

Originally Posted by OhToodles!

Way to go!! Awesome!

btw - I did Week 1 Day 1 this morning before work (5:45am) and am determined to do it MWF each week. Thanks for the motivation!

Hi Kelly Happy to see we have another runner starting! Keep us posted!

[OhToodles!]

Originally Posted by Amy L

Hi Kelly Happy to see we have another runner starting! Keep us posted!

Thank you!!
Did Week 1 Day 2 this am (early) again. Was going to yesterday, but we had some nasty weather in the am and I played golf right after work.

[Tinkerboo]

Week 6 Run 2
When: Saturday 7th June, 10.30am
Where: Private road by 'our' beach, by myself
Weather: Dull, with very light specks of drizzle at one point
How long: 20 minutes (just running, I'm not including the warm up and cool down in the time/distances any more and I paused it during the walk break)
How far: 1.64 miles (as above)
What's the plan?: 5m (mins) warm-up walk - run 10m - walk 3m - run 10m - 5m cooldown.
How'd I feel?: Okay, so prepare yourselves for something of a pity party. I totally lost my mojo this week. On Tuesday I had an Open University exam - three hours of solid writing (by HAND! Who does that any more?!) about religion, and straight after that I went to the theatre with my mum to see Cats (not sure if I liked it or not - the cast were great but the show material itself less so). So by the time I got home that day it was nearly 11pm - I was off the next day as usual (I don't work Wednesdays) so could sleep in a bit, but I just felt so very drained and worn out. Probably from the effort of revising and trying to hold all that information in the short-term memory banks to call on in the exam. I expected it to wear off but I kinda still feel the same now and it's Saturday!

I could have run yesterday, as I was off work to dog-sit while Andy was working a super-long shift...but I just couldn't get up the motivation, even though the weather was beautiful. I almost wouldn't have gone this morning either except for the fact that it was forecast to rain all day and that was the only dry slot (this turned out to be a lie - I'm looking at gorgeous sunshine right now at 4pm ). But Andy was taking the dog and I knew that if I kept on letting it slide then I might revert back to my old ways and let it disappear altogether, so I rolled out of bed, through the bathroom and into my clothes and off we went.

So I've mentioned that I'm not good at mornings (even late start mornings like this) - I really tried hard to not think about anything and just concentrate on left foot/right foot, but it was so hard. The first ten minutes, as usual, felt sluggish and heavy, then after the 3m walk break, the second ten minutes started out a little better - "hurrah!" I thought "it's that bit where everything gets better!" - but I wasn't even halfway through that before I had to slow, and slow, and slow till I was pretty much just walking with a slight bit of bounce. I was literally praying for Stacy to tell me I'd finished. I know you guys have told me that it's not always enjoyable, and rarely easy, but I'd never felt more strongly that I was going to fail than I did on this one. The little voice was properly going for it with the "you'll never run 5k, this isn't even HALF of 5k, you could walk this faster, you're going to look stupid at that race at the end of June, etc etc". I tried to tell her where to go, but man it was hard. The only plus is that I did manage to travel a tiny bit further than when I did 20 solid minutes last week (0.14 of a mile further this time).

Do you think it's because I had such a (comparatively) big gap since the last session? Till now the biggest gap had been two days, but this was four days doing nothing...maybe that caused it to become a Big Issue in my subconscious and so I found it harder? Or perhaps I'd have coped just fine, had I been doing it later in the day once my system had got going properly? I don't know. But all the remaining sessions are solid running, from 22 minutes next time, up to 30 at the end of week 8 - and it still feels as totally impossible as it did in week 1...

[lsugirlinutah]

I'm just catching up on this thread...I LOVE that we have some new runners!! We will all be running halves, Goofys and Dopeys together very soon!

[disney_duke]

That is the very definition of a bad running day. It could be a combination of things causing it, who knows. I've yet to figure out the major reasons for bad running days myself. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with being simply exhausted. I also find that if I miss 3 days in a row of running, it's just that much harder mentally to get out the door. 2 days is like the magic number. It's enough rest, yet your mind is still raring to go. 3 days (or longer) and your mind gets used to the relaxation. So, yeah, it's probably a combination of being exhausted and mentally just not prepared.

But I'm glad you got that run in. Now you know how bad it can be, and the next time you go out can only get better.

[Tinkerboo]

Originally Posted by disney_duke

3 days (or longer) and your mind gets used to the relaxation.

I think that's exactly it - I felt like I'd reverted back to the couch-loving me that I was six weeks ago, chilling out by watching TV, playing Xbox etc. After studying for nine months (alongside a full time job) it was just nice to be able to do nothing on Wednesday! But unfortunately then I went back to work on Thursday and felt wiped out after that and into Friday. I think that if Andy had been here on Friday, we would have gone together and this probably wouldn't have happened, but he worked from Thursday evening right through to Friday evening. I did walk the dog twice yesterday...so wasn't totally inactive all day!

Originally Posted by disney_duke

But I'm glad you got that run in. Now you know how bad it can be, and the next time you go out can only get better.

Thanks - I do hope so! I just worry that the runs like this one will come to outnumber the 'good' ones...

[lsugirlinutah]

Welcome to the bad run club...we've all had them! It's so frustrating. I've had times when two days prior I ran 8 miles and felt great and then tried to do 3 miles and could barely finish 1 mile. It happens to the best of us. Sometimes there's a reason (as Tanya suggests, maybe too much time off), sometimes there isn't, it just happens. Don't let it discourage you. Keep going. Remember that every single runner has had their bad running days. It doesn't mean you aren't making progress or that you aren't a good runner.

Keep it up!!!!

[Tinkerboo]

Thanks! It's another lovely day here so I'm going to bite the bullet and go out for W6R3 shortly. It's nearly 5pm, so safely past being 'In The Morning'...so hopefully I should do better this time!

[Tinkerboo]

Week 6 Run 3
When: Sunday 8th June, 5.30pm
Where: Private road by 'our' beach, Andy walking the dog
Weather: Bright and very warm, strong winds at times
How long: 22 minutes
How far: 1.7 miles (as above)
What's the plan?: 5m (mins) warm-up walk - run 22- 5m cooldown.
How'd I feel?: I wanted to get straight back out following yesterday's 'meh' experience...the weather was good so I seized the opportunity! The wind was strong so instead of doing the warm up walk in the direction I normally do, I walked into the wind, thinking that further down the line it would mean less running into the wind. Smart cookie, me...

Remembering yesterday, I kept it super slow at the start to allow the ten minutes of feeling bleh to go by without over exerting and before I knew it Stacy was telling me I was halfway through. Hurrah! I tried to clear my mind and just enjoy the music and the scenery (and the small boy who gave me a double thumbs up as I went past him ) and time did pass in a not too terrible way. I started getting a slight stitch in the second half but alas - no walk breaks to get rid of it now (!), so I tried to just ignore it and breath as deeply as possible to relax it. I think it worked, mostly. So yes, I did the full 22 minutes...slow as always, but I don't mind: it was an improvement on yesterday and that's the main thing.

Just a quick update this time, as I forgot to write it straight away and now it's bedtime...

[disney_duke]

Well done! Looks like the afternoon is your sweet spot.