welsh hills again

It is six months to the day since I started couch to 5k.  So how has it been?  Is it worth doing?  Am I still running?  Have I lost two stone and become an elite athlete? Er, no to that last one. I am still running and to my surprise I really enjoy it now.  When I was going through the programme I always loved how I felt afterwards but I often struggled with the runs themselves.  It was hard.  My legs sometimes worked when my lungs didn't want to.  I kept going through the nine weeks of C25k as much because I am stubborn as for any other reason.  I didn't want to do it sometimes but I didn't want to give up more. Couch to 5k is a bit of a misnomer I think.  When I got to the end of the nine weeks I was astonished and delighted to find that I could run for 30 minutes but I was nowhere near being able to run 5km.  My first 5k was my first park run, six weeks later.  It took me 46 minutes and I was absolutely amazed that I cou...

For the first time the programme for this week had no intervals of walking and running and it was all running.  I think mixed fortunes is the best way to describe how week seven went.  I decided to do the first run of the week by walking down the steep track to the river in the valley and treating the walk down as my warm up.  I did not get this quite right.  I tried to time it so that I didn't start the five minute count down until I was far enough down the hill to begin running near the bottom.  The change from walking to running actually happened just a little too soon as I got to a house on the right of the track and here the track was very deeply rutted and muddy so the first few minutes of running were not pleasant.  When I got to my usual running place all was well and I managed the twenty five minutes of running without a hitch.  I walked back up the track, treating that as my cool down, feeling pretty smug.  Too smug, too soon.  When...

It felt like a bit of a come down this week to go out for my first run of the week and find it was meant to be two runs of eight minutes each with a walk in between.  I was on such a high after I managed to do my twenty minutes last week that I was expecting to do more.  I am sure there is method in the madness of whoever put the couch to 5k programme together.  Certainly run number one felt easy enough.  I ran down by the river again and contemplated the fact that it would become very boring if I never ran anywhere else! Run 2 was on Saturday after a busy Friday where we had a lunch out in Manchester and a meal with friends in the evening.  I had been the designated driver so I hadn't had anything to drink but we had taken in a lot of food over the course of the day.  Perhaps that was why I felt so sluggish and slow.  This one was two runs of ten minutes each with a walk in between.  I suppose I had been due a bad run.  I hadn't really had...

I was on a real high after run two of week five, having achieved two runs of eight minutes each.  The next run was meant to be twenty minutes long.  How could that be?  And yet while I was daunted I was also really interested to see whether I could do it.  The Couch to 5k programme hadn't let me down yet so maybe, just maybe, it was doable?  After all they would hardly set people up to fail would they? So I was all ready for Thursday last week and what felt to me like the breakthrough between trying to learn how to run and actually running. And then it snowed. It looked very beautiful but it did not look like the kind of conditions I could run in. I thought I should do something to try to keep the fitness going so I had a go on our exercise bike.  I only managed about ten minutes.  I don't know what it is about the exercise bike but I really hate it.  I find it intensely boring and it feels intensely useless.  If I am outside...

A couple of days ago I looked at what was in store for week four and did not like what I found!  Running for five minutes at a time and much more running altogether looked like a real challenge.  I decided I would run somewhere different for this.  We live high on a hillside and there are limited opportunities to run on the flat.  Weighting the scales in my favour by running on flat ground seemed like a good idea!  So this morning I drove down to the bottom of our valley and parked the car so that I could run by the river.  I felt a bit guilty driving down rather than walking, but I was pretty sure that if I added the steep haul back home to my run I would be overwhelmed by the jump up in physical demand and might just have to sit in a corner and cry! So down I went, parked by the little river, where the water was rushing and leaping over the stones and set off, Jo Whiley encouraging me from my phone on the couch to 5k app.  The first run was fo...

Run one.  Well, today was run one of week three and I was nervous.  This run required me to go for three minutes for the first time and three minutes seemed a big jump from ninety seconds.  We went to yoga this morning and I was feeling very stretched and ironed out by that.  I had missed breakfast so by the time we got home I was starving and immediately made scrambled eggs with tomatoes and spinach.  I decided I shouldn't run directly after that and sat down to do some knitting instead.  An hour or so later I looked out of the window.  It was raining gently.  This did not make me feel like going out. However one of the good things about this fitness drive is that Ian is also doing the couch to 5k and I find that the fact that I am not alone motivates me when I might well give up if I was.  He ran before lunch and came in reporting that it wasn't so bad.  Now he is fitter than I am so that didn't mean I would think the same but it did...

I was a bit daunted by the idea that, having achieved my three sessions for the first week, I was expected to run for a bit longer in week two.  I should point out that "a bit longer" means ninety seconds instead of sixty, followed by two minutes of walking, repeated five times. So the first run of week two and I did notice the small increase.  For some reason the app was refusing me access to Sarah Millican as the voice of my trainer so I chose Jo Whiley instead.  I liked her too.  She probably gives you a little more of her own experience and that is quite motivating.  So I survived the first run of  week two and, in the day's break between runs one and two, my new bra and running trainers arrived. I cannot tell you that the bra is a thing of beauty but goodness, it works!  I did a bit of research on the internet and bought a bra called Panache, recommended by a women's running magazine.  Have you ever noticed that caravans which trundle alo...

I downloaded the couch to 5k app onto my phone and was delighted to see that I could have Sarah Millican as the voice of my trainer!  Sarah is funny and dry and far from skinny.  I don't mind being told to run for sixty seconds in her warm Geordie voice. Well the first decision was what to wear to have a go at this.  A couple of years ago I decided that, after six years or so,  yoga was clearly here to stay and bought myself some new yoga gear so I have leggings and yoga tops and very lovely they are too.  I also have lots of gardening t shirts and jeans but I haven't really got any equivalent of tracksuit bottoms which it makes sense to jog in.  In the end I found a loose pair of exercise bottoms which used to be my yogawear before I upgraded.  Then the question was what to wear on my feet.  I know that it is important to wear suitable running trainers but I feared that if I didn't get started until I had all the gear I might miss the moment wh...