Couch to 5K - week 5, part 1

Week 5

There are three different workouts for this week. They are as follows:

• Run 1: brisk 5-minute warm-up walk, then 5 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 5 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 5 minutes running.
• Run 2: brisk 5-minute warm-up walk, then 8 minutes running, 5 minutes walking, 8 minutes running.
• Run 3: brisk 5-minute warm-up walk, then 20 minutes running, with no walking.

I honestly thought I’d read this week’s couch to 5k schedule wrong.

Run 1 - that’s possible

Run 2 - that’s challenging but possible

Run 3 - surely in the wrong week. That can’t possibly be run three of week five!

I don’t understand why run three is so much more challenging than any of the others. It’s more than double the time I’ve run in one go before.

We’ve now completed run one and two from this week without any real issues. I enjoyed both of them and I suggested to my running partner that maybe we should do these two once more each to get up more into running for an extended period but he said we should just go for it. My worry is that I’ve never actually given up on a running section and walked and this is something that I prize highly, I don’t want to give up on this but I just don’t think I’ll be able to keep going for the full twenty minutes. I think it’s important to note that my running partner stops to walk (and sometimes stops completely) quite regularly, he tends to do a sprint section and is then exhausted, so stopping holds no shame for him. Part of me wishes that I’d stopped for a walk in one of the earlier runs so I could experience the failure of giving up earlier and then gone out the next day and smashed it. I’m pretty sure that’s cheating.

I’ve been trying to sort out strategies for this big run. I’ve got my new running shoes, which are really successful and I’ve got one of those handheld running water bottles because I’ve found being really thirsty distracting in previous runs, I know that you’re not supposed to need water up to 5k, but I’m hoping it will at least be a reward I can give myself. What I’m not sure about is a strategy during the run. I’m planning on going as slow as humanly possible whilst still not walking (I do still run slower than I walk at times, but I don’t stop running) but I’m yet to decide whether to “allow” myself some walking breaks, how many and for how long.

I’m ready for the physical side of the run, but I’m yet to figure out the mental part.