Couch to 5k | Week Two

Last week you may have seen my post about starting my first week of couch to 5k via the free app. I’ve now just completed the second week, and as I enjoyed writing the last post I thought I would make it a weekly thing to share my progress until the 9 weeks are up. As someone with a lifelong distain for running any kind of distance, I think it’ll be quite interesting to see how I progress through the weeks, but also, by sharing here it also holds me to account. If I skip a run I’ll have to own up to it, and I find that in itself to be fairly strong motivation.

 

This week was meant to be slightly harder, with the running sections being 90 seconds rather than 60. Although the recovery time in which you switch to a brisk walk was also longer, so it probably weighed up to a similar amount of running time compared to the previous week.

 

Much like in my previous post I’ll be breaking up the three runs for week two, as each one is slightly different. Right, let’s see how I got on;

 

Run one

I feel like everything was kind of against me for this run. I took longer to get ready because I had misplaced my trainers (well, one of them), and then when I did get out I found that the ground was quite slippery. I had pulled a muscle in my bum a day or so before which wasn’t too much of a problem until about a third of the way round when it was quite painful. Oh, and I trod in a dead bird by accident. Eww.

 

I’ve been quite an accident prone person in the past, and some of those previous injuries really made themselves known during this run, in particular my ankle, on which I’ve had reconstructive surgery to put 3 ligaments back together (one being my ATL). It was quite strange because I had none of these issues at all in the first week. On top of that I forgot to set my Strava going until I had already started running. Oops.

 

That all being said, despite this being a progression from the previous week with longer running sections I still feel that I managed fairly well. In fact when I finished and moved onto the cool down I would have been tempted to run a bit more had I not had pain in my ankle. despite everything I still felt pretty positive about this one.

 

Run two

I was far more organised for this run and went out as soon as I finished work, which meant I had plenty of evening left afterwards. It was still quite sunny so this was a warmer run which made me thankful that I had put on an SPF moisturiser to give my skin a little more protection before going out in the sunshine.

 

For this run I used my asthma inhaler once at the start and then didn’t use it again, although I of course still carried it with me just in case. There were quite a few walkers with dogs around for this one (probably due to the nice weather) so I had to dive off the narrow path and into the field a few times to avoid them. To be fair when I was on a running section most of them moved over before I had a chance to, which was nice of them. Whenever I was walking I made a point to get out of their way, so that they didn’t have to be the ones moving every time we passed each other.

 

One thing I did struggle with was pain in the arch of my right foot, even for the walking segments. I think it’s partly down to the fact that I’m still new to running, but it doesn’t help that I’m using pretty rubbish trainers with little to no arch support. I asked the people of Twitter for advise on some decent shoes, and Christie from Christie’s Lifestyle told me that I could get my gain analysed locally to find the perfect running shoes!  If I can keep this up, it’s certainly something I want to look into!

 

Run three

This was another straight after work run, but this time it was a little more overcast with a nice cool breeze. My pulled muscle had recovered by then and I only had minimal pain in my foot and ankle this time. There weren’t as many people out and about this time, in fact there was just the one walker taking his little Labrador puppy out on her second ever walk – naturally when she bounded up to me I stopped to say hello.

 

I felt a lot more comfortable on this run, and even added another running section at the point the app wanted me to switch to my cool down walk.

 

 

I’m quite pleased that I found the transition from week one to week two relatively easy, but it’s important to remember that everyone is different. Given I have seven more weeks to go until I reach the end of couch to 5k, there’s no doubt in my mind that there will be weeks ahead that are a real struggle to get through, but I’m optimistic that I have the motivation to do it!

 

After my three couch to 5k runs during the week, I even plucked up the motivation to go for a run on Sunday, without C25K and just had my Strava running to see how well I could do. I ran for far longer than I have on my controlled runs and managed to hit 5 personal bests, and knock 2 and a bit minutes off my minutes per mile time. Going out for a run is something I have never done when I don’t have to, so the fact that I felt motivated to is a massive step in the right direction.

 

Today is my first run of week 3, and I’m feeling cautiously optimistic!