Sunday, March 14, 2010

W3D3 of C25K is in the can



Yesterday I managed to successfully complete the third week of Cool Runnings’ Couch-to-5K training program. The goal of the program is to take a total couch potato (moi) and turn her into an active healthy person who can run a distance of 3.1 miles, or run for approximately 30 minutes. I’m getting support through a Facebook group and also by listening to podcasts that some guy put together to help get through the program.

My husband is a runner; I’ve tried to become a runner before but have always failed. Either work got in the way, or I got sick or managed to injure myself. This time, things are going well. I have been running on Mondays and Wednesdays after work and on Saturday mornings. This week could be a little different because it is Spring Break and I am also apparently fighting off a bit of a cold. So we’ll see how it goes. Right now, though, everything is fine.

The podcasts were made by a guy named Robert in Northern California who decided to do the C25K program shortly after his 43rd birthday. He’s done a nice job of putting together this podcast that times out the various warm-up, jog, walk, and cool down interludes by each of the nine weeks it takes to make a runner (or jogger, or in my case, schlogger) out of a spud. I’m not crazy about the music, as it is kind of mindless techo-stuff that is mostly just rhythm track. I keep listening to the introduction for each piece and wondering when the song is going to start, but then the music changes enough to let me know that if there was a song, I missed it. So it’s not music that I would like to listen to on my own, but is it good for running? Yep, so it’s good enough for me.

Week Four starts tomorrow. I’ll be running three and five minute intervals with walking breaks in between them. Depending on the weather and time of day, I’ll either run along the Northport River Path (probably not its official name) or the Tuscaloosa River Path (which is just across the same river but down the road a piece) or on the indoor track at the Rec Center. My strategy is to not measure my running in terms of performance until my first race; I’m afraid that if I know what my pace is that I will get focused on that. I need to leave myself alone and just work the plan. I will be a runner one day!


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