Hey comrades, hope the running is going well!
It's that sort of time that things are thawing out for our Northern Hemisphere comrades, and people who have been going stir-crazy stuck at home in the cold might be thinking of venturing out to start up some running, so I thought it might be a good time to give some love to our new/restarting runners this week!
It's in the sidebar, but the Couch to 5k program receives pretty universally good reviews from what I've heard, and is considered an excellent way of getting yourself up to a very respectable distance from scratch. It's a 9-week plan if you blast straight through it, but also pretty explicitly favours repeating any given week until you're comfortable if you're finding the week-on-week increases to be a bit much, which I think is excellent advice. There's also various apps and things that can help as well. Someone correct me if they have more or better info about it!
Anyone just starting up or getting through a couch to 5k or similar? How is it going? What are your thoughts on it all? Or have you gone for any alternative approaches to starting up running that have worked for you (or haven't worked)? Or just thinking about starting and wanting some advice/motivation?
I thought it might be good as well for people who have done a bit more running to also talk about things you wished you knew when you started...for me the absolute biggest thing was feeling like you're too old/ungainly/slow/unsporty/fat/dorky/whatever to start running and that everyone would be looking at you and judging you, and having that stop me from starting for way too long. In reality, I discovered that one of the silver linings of our alienated societies under late capitalism is that absolutely nobody gives a shit, and nobody is paying attention to you running at all, and if they do they will have forgotten you in half a second flat. And the actual running community, at least as I've experienced it, is a super supportive one that is very welcoming of people at every level
Anyway, as always also feel free to brag about running successes of the week or whatever other running related stuff you want to share!
Well done comrade! That's a huge achievement! :vuvuzela:
I don't know what the generally accepted follow up is for couch to 5k (I'm sure I've seen couch to 10k somewhere), but I would suggest keeping up with easy paced distance (i.e. your 5ks and one slightly longer run each week) will actually be the best way to build speed (as well as distance). Maybe add in one "tempo" run per week where you try and run the 5k "comfortably hard" - i.e. a bit harder than normal but not all-out
Thanks for the advice. Part of the decision is what will fit in with my schedule and what I'll have the willpower to keep up. Maybe start by doing actual 5ks (the 30 min runs were further than that) 3 times a week to start with then see where I want to go next.
Yeah sounds like a good call. Someone once told me "the best type of run is the one that you will actually go and do" and I think about that a lot. Slower, easier runs are the best for building your base aerobic fitness (which also translates to more gas in the tank for going fast), and they're much easier to motivate yourself to get out the door for as well
PS I just noticed that there's some post-c25k links in the c25k link I posted up the top, might be worth a look
Ah thanks, I hadn't spotted those.