Today marked the completion of Week 3 Day 1 of my C25K training. (Woot woot!) Week 1 went pretty smoothly since I had been doing Zumba, Turbo Kick, Body Pump, and other various activities that really built a great foundation for starting this training. Week 2 Day 1 was really rough, but the rest of the week I could see how my body was improving and adapting.
Today included a mixture of emotions and experiences throughout the 28 minute session. I’m in San Francisco, which brought challenges that I completely overlooked. Like…. hills. Lots of hills. BIG hills. But also crosswalks, which is what made it toughest to keep up with the app. Well, the hills took all the motivation I might have had to think of an alternate solution to keep going despite the crosswalks and traffic.
Regardless of those challenges, I still ended the session thinking “that’s it? Nooo!!” Which was an amazing feeling that only crazy runner-folks would have. And I’m not at all one of those…
The Road Ahead
As I’m working towards being able to run 5K without walking or passing out, I’ve been using the C25K app to log my sessions as well as my Google calendar to remind me to run. It really is the only way I have found to keep myself accountable. I’ve also started using my gCal to look ahead and try to plan for a faster, “easier” run for the Color Run 5K on August 24th that I’m running with my amazing big sis.
So, I finish my C25K training around June 28th. That gives me a whole 8 weeks before the 5K on Aug. 24th to improve my time and endurance. I’m not really quite sure how to do it, though. This article from Greatist has some great tips, but with such a short amount of time between now and the 5K, I’m left even more lost. I know I need to strength train. I know I need to incorporate faster-paced runs, and I know I need to build my endurance (I’m thinking by upping my runs to 5x/week). I also know I need to keep up with my yoga amongst all of these other to-do’s.
I think that much of this will be trial and error experimentation with how much is too much for my body to take. Which will be super-über fun for me since I’m a geek like that. But, it most likely is not the most efficient way to go about it. Oh well. I’ll have more fun and learn more with trial and error. 🙂
For the time being, though, these are the mile markers I’m working towards:
- This week: C25K 3x + Ashtanga Yoga practice 2x
- May 19-June 22: C25K 3x + Yoga* 3x + Pilates 2x
- June 23-June 29: C25K 3x + Yoga 3x + Strength Training 2x
- June 30-July 20: Run Further* 3x + Yoga 3x + Strength Training 2x
- July 21-August 3: Run Further 5x + Yoga 5x
- August 4-August 22: Run Faster* 3x + Yoga 3x
Everything above is of course completely dependent upon how my body feels, how it adapts to each change cycle, and anything else it decides to tell me.
*Yoga
This morning before I ran, I did only a couple of sun salutations to warm and loosen myself up a bit before heading out. This seemed to help improve my performance, so I’ll keep trying it. I’ll most likely alternate between warming up before/stretching out after my runs and working on my full Ashtanga practice on days that I don’t run.
*Run Further
It seems rather logical that if I build myself up to running further than 5K, my 5K time and endurance will improve. I’m planning to work myself up to 4 miles at the very least, and I’m hoping to keep that going for each run up until the Color Run.
*Run Faster
After my 5x/week stint I’ll take it back down to running only 3x/week but working on improving my time. At the end of my C25K training I’ll record my time, and I’ll track my time through the entire “Run Faster” leg of my training plan.
Now to see how this all works out…. 🙂
What do you suggest? What training plans have worked for you?
