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I have been following the Couch-to-5K program for five weeks now (today will be W6D1) in effort to increase my fitness. As far as 5K’s go, I will be participating in my first 5K’s in December. They aren’t straight 5K’s, they are obstacle runs. On December 1st, I will be running with some co-workers in the Dirty Girl Mud Run, and on December 15th I will be running with my boyfriend in Run for Your Lives! which I’m super excited for. So in preparing for these, I have been doing C25K again. I had been following this program before when I was attempting to train for a half marathon (which I’d still like to do), but I didn’t make it to week 7 because I got injured, and running went on a hiatus for a while. Then another injury presented itself, and Texas heat became excrutiating, so it was quite some time before I returned to the road. To keep in shape I continued to go to kickboxing at least twice a week, but I didn’t hurry myself back into running.
I have always loathed running, and couldn’t understand how people liked it. Even when I got up to running 2 miles without stopping, it was still rough and I hated it.
A survey in Runner’s World asked 3,363 people how long it took to make running a habit. The results were:
A few weeks – 28%
A few months – 36%
A year or more – 17%
It’s still not a habit, but I’d like it to be – 20%
I try to remind myself of this. It’s not going to happen overnight, but I do have to keep pushing myself, and not give up.
Last Friday was W5D3 for me, and I was a little nervous about it because it’s run 2 miles without stopping. I had only ever been able to do that twice before in my life, and it was a feat for me. It had been quite some time since I had run that far. But I had been following the C25K program every week before that, and my boyfriend was there to run with me and push me.
I surprised myself by not only being able to do it, but being able to do it with ease. Breathing was very easy, and I found that it wasn’t my stamina that made me want to stop at all, like it had always been, but the soreness in my legs (we did a lot of legs in kickboxing that week!).
I was mostly surprised at how much improved my endurance was, and how easy breathing was. I think this time around the C25K has been easier because I finally learned how to breathe from my diaphragm as opposed to my chest and it made quite a difference.
So, assuming all goes well with my training and there aren’t any hiccups, I should be on the last day of C25K by October 12th. That gives me 7 weeks until the Mud Run, and 9 until the zombie run, which I think should be a good amount of time to perfect my 5K time and work more on speed and incorprate hills. I’d really like to finish the zombie run as a survivor.
So I will keep training.
