(Catch up with Part 1 of my Couch to 5K story here)
Reader, I did it! I ran twenty minutes without stopping! Go me! (You may remember that when we left off I was about to embark on Week 5, Run 3 which was running for twenty minutes without walking intervals, and having had an enforced break of a full week thanks to the snow, I wasn’t convinced I would be able to do it. But I did! I guess walking through the snow is more of a workout than I thought.) So that was Week 5 in the bag and it was on to Week 6, which was back to intervals for the first two runs, then a longer run for the third one. The biggest challenge now was finding a route to run, usually in the dark, that was reasonably flat. I live on a hill. Well, I don’t, I live at the bottom of about three hills so whichever direction you go, you’re going up to start with. Gah. Weekends are fine, I can walk down to the park and then run along the old railway line that is now a cycle path, but there’s no way I would contemplate that in the dark. Roll on the lighter nights.
And so I carried on through Week 7 and into Week 8, sometimes running consecutive days (even though Jo advised against it) if I knew my plans would be thwarted later in the week (thanks again for that, snow). From Week 7 every run is a longer one, building up from 25 minutes to a full 30 minutes by Week 9. And do you know what? I could do it. I could run for a full half an hour. Go me!
After another delay because of snow, I finished Week 9 and I was a little disappointed. What was I going to do now? No more Jo to encourage me on my way! I figured my options were:
1. Keep up with what I know I can do, running 30 minutes at a time, either with Jo repeating herself ad infinitum, or on my own, sans commentary.
2. Start the 5K to 10K programme.
I chose option two. At the time of writing I had only done one run from the programme, which involved a three minute faster run in the middle of two ten minute jogs. I wasn’t sure I liked this programme. The trainer (an American girl named Candace) didn’t talk to me, she just said ‘jog’, ‘run’, ‘walk’ at the relevant intervals. I missed Jo. But I persevered with it. Stay tuned for part 3 to see how I get on!
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