C25K newbies support thread

really sorry about your friend empress

I am sure you will be caught up in the atmosphere of the big race and be fine.

hi compost ! I'm also on w3. w3r2 is after work tonight !! I'll keep you (virtually) company !

Darling, have a look back at Crotchet's posts about using an interval app & adding 30 seconds on at a time. Maybe something like that would help?

W7R2 done and I never, ever, EVER thought I'd be considering getting fitted for running shoes as a Christmas present.

Anyone else struggling on week 5? I've repeated it 4 times and I just can't do the 20 minute run - I'm struggling to do 8 minutes on D2. The worse bit is I'm actually getting slower - my running pace last time I did the 2x8 min was 11 min/km, my slowest ever!

Becoming so demotivated, I loved it at the start, but now I'm just not progressing

Welcome to the thread, compost.

If you can run 3 minutes - which you can - you're already over halfway to being able to run 5 minutes!

Hello!

Can I join in too. Did W3R2 today and feeling very pleased with myself, but already dreading W4.

I only sat down to read this to encourage myself that it is possible to run for a whole 5 minutes without conking out - DH is a very keen runner, slightly incredulous that I am worried about running for 5 minutes, and therefore not the best person to share my fears with!

Crotchet, I know exactly what you mean about tomatoes.

Welcome to the thread, Name. I only run in the mornings because it's when I have the most energy.

Woohoo Kestrel, good on you!

OK I have a mission now. One of my oldest & best friends, S, died from pancreatic cancer yesterday so I'm going to apply for a Pancreatic Cancer UK place on the Vitality London 10K in May 2017.

I am quite possibly nuts and doing the 5K Race for Life would be much easier. But I think if I'm doing it as a tribute to S & to raise money, it ought to be a challenge.

w3r1 completed.

first time my bum has been seen in leggings in public for over a decade i think !!!

Thinking pacing myself outside will be my challenge though. went out way too quick on the first 90sec/3min runs....... the last 3mi run was so slow !!! but did it.

And finally have app I am happy with. it correctly fades my own music down to give you audible prompts.

Next runs weds and friday afterwork, and back in the gym.

starting to properly stretch my thighs before and after, slight tightness in my right thigh if I am not careful.

but woohoo! still on target.

Hi can I join?
Reading all your stories has made me more determined to keep this up. Did w2r2 last night and going out again tomorrow.
Had anybody noticed a difference going in the night or morning?

I went out this morning with the Map My Run on with the new settings, but it didn't really make a difference. The distance shown on the computer was still about 230m less than the distance it measured - and when you look at the map trace of what it was measuring, it looks like a drunk person weaving all over the paths, straying into the river at times, spinning in circles on a couple of occasions... I guess if I had really done all that, it might have added up to an extra 230m!

It means also that my time is slower than it shows, which I guess does make sense, because when I mapped the loop I always run in a specific amount of time, and calculated it from there, it seemed like I would need 40 min to run 5K. And yet my app was showing that I had already done that, with a mix of running and walking. But clearly it wasn't as far as I thought!

Hate running into people I know who see me like this - such a sweaty tomato face, even when I'm feeling OK. It felt a bit easier this morning actually, though still quite painful on my shins afterwards. It goes away fairly quickly, which is progress, but throughout the next few days I still get stabbing pain at times.

As for outfits, I normally need far less than I think I do!

Kestrel, I know, but you wait...

You'll get used to 3 min runs. There's no time limit.

And then 5 min runs will feel daunting but when you're ready you'll give them a go, maybe do them for an extra week or so if you need to, until you feel ready to try 8 mins... & then 10...

So I set up MapMyRun & walked my route this morning, and took a photo of the magic 5K point. It seems far further walking than it does running! I had to keep reminding myself that I'm two thirds of the way there so it IS doable.

crochet i was assuming it would be 2minutes, which feels ok to me. will see how i go.

3 minute runs is where I started to struggle, and to create my own programme a bit - I used to do week 2 and add 15 sec to the runs, maybe a bit more on the last one, until I felt I was almost at the 3 minutes already, and then went to week 3.

Same for week 4.

And beyond that, I just kind of loosely followed it, and gradually increased it up to my 'stage 5' because the official program increased the time in far too big jumps for me.

just had a look at w3 ...... 3min runs ???? more eek!!

Empress i hope i will like it, hoping i judge my outfit well for the temperature.

Congrats Kestrel. You might find outdoors is more fun!

W2 completed!
Unfortunately I can't run weds or Thurs next week, so think o might have to brave my first outdoor run this Sunday. Eek!

Still fighting a bit with tech. My crappy phone lost signal at the gym so it was back to the boring podcast. Good music makes such a difference!

That's really helpful, thanks Crotchet. I'll experiment a bit.

I know what you mean about being surprised to look forward to them, Kestrel.

A bloke at work today casually referred to doing a quick 5K in his lunch hour BUT he's in his 20s, plays football a lot & has much longer legs than I do!

my motivation is fitness..... but also to help with stress/anxiety.
its funny but looking at my resting heart rate for the year, i can trace various incidents in the chart !

I am actually looking forward to my runs though ?? thought i would be dreading them.

I picture myself running over the top of all the work people who piss me off

That's good! I think the increase in fitness is the reason I keep doing it - can't say I've ever got the endorphins or anything yet...

I don't feel very close yet - still 15 minutes of walking to turn into running, which seems like an awful lot! But I am making progress. Most of my outings are now about 50% running, 50% walking I guess, about 20 min of running in total. Just have to get the stamina up so that it's longer stretches at a time.

Map my run is good - but on an iPhone 4S like mine, it struggles a bit and occasionally quits - somethign newer would work fine. It is better to map the run with their online system, rather than trust the gps as you go. You can plot the exact route, along footpaths and everything, online and then it calculates the distance. It seems more accurate than the tracking as you go. Though there are some tips in one of the articles about how to make it more accurate, like making sure background refresh is on, that location services are set to 'always' for the app, not just 'when in use', etc., so I'm hoping those will increase the accuracy of mine next time (even though it means it will say that I have gone less far, and probably more slowly!!).

So i had a look at my resting heartrate....... after 2 weeks it has already decreased - from 64 to 60 !

motivation for w2r3 this evening. I think back to my music and just timing myself as opposed to listening to the prompts.

You sound so close, Crotchet!

W7R1 done.

Bat out of Hell came up on my playlist for the final stretch, which was perfect .

So is MapMyRun worth getting? I think at the weekend I'm going to scope out my route, find the 5K point and see how long the nice wide bit by the river actually is.

thanks.

I was pleased that my Map My Run tracker app showed that including the 15 minutes of walking, the whole outing was supposedly 5K. I don't actually believe it, because when I zoom in on the map, the line wanders all over the place (into the river!) and loops around on itself a bit, etc., rather than just straight following the footpath! When I plot the same route online on the route-creator, it says it's only 4.7Km. So not quite as exciting knowing that - I think it needs another half loop to make it 5K. And of course I can't include the 10 minutes of warm up/cool down in the end. But still, it's nice to see that number and get a vague idea of how much 5K actually is. Wish the tracker was a bit more accurate though, but I read somewhere that there is a setting you can change to improve it, so I've done that need - will be interesting to see if it's any different when I measure on Sunday, which is when I'm next out. Feet/shins/ankles dependent, of course!

Wow Basin!

Crotchet

Hi all! Sorry I've been AWOL. Good to see you are all keeping at it.

I haven't had a chance to run since last weds (when I actually run 5k!) but will go out tonight. I ended up jumping from week 7 to 5k by accident as the app stopped working so I just did what I thought. When I mapped it I realised I'd done 4.99k so was well chuffed.

Have signed up to a half marathon today so need to keep it going now. Want to get to 10k by Xmas

unfortunately swimming tends to make my back ache, as well as my skin, eyes and hair absolutely absorbing chlorine and itching/smelling for ages. It's really hard to find something that does hurt. cycling sometimes, but hard on the knees and I don't find that I go far/fast enough to get a real sweat up like with running.

at least this is free, and I can fit it in whenever I can find an hour to go out, and 30-60 min after I come back to recover my colour!!

I hope that now I have orthotics, it will just take getting used to them very very very slowly. I can't count how many times I've restarted the programme over the years and quit from injuries, but I hope this time will be different :)