Couch To 5k–Week 3

The instructions on the Couch-To-5K page for week 3 are as follows…

Brisk five-minute warm-up walk, then do two repetitions of the following:

Jog 200 yards (or 90 seconds)
Walk 200 yards (or 90 seconds)
Jog 400 yards (or 3 minutes)
Walk 400 yards (or three minutes)

Once again I am troubled by the math / logic.  The above makes sense IF you jog at the same speed that you walk.  You can see that they assume you travel 200 yards (maybe 1/9 of a mile) in 90 seconds (about 4.5 miles per hour) whether you are walking or jogging.  While I have no proof, I am pretty sure my jogging speed is faster than my walking speed.  Because of this assumption I just go with the time measurement (90 seconds) rather than the distance measurement (90 seconds) when following the instructions.

Ignoring my anal-retentive issues with the instructions, Monday was a killer.  Turns our running for 3 minutes is more difficult that I was guessing, especially the 2nd repetition.  By the time Friday arrived though I was doing OK.  Winded but not dying (like on Monday).  This week had a total of 9 minutes jogging compared to only 6 minutes for weeks 1 and 2.  Next week’s plan has me running for 16 minutes and that does not sound like any fun at all.

Nina (my Doberman) even was a bit winded so I wonder if she will be OK as the weeks continue.  By the end of week 5 (only 13 days away) I will be running for 20 straight minutes.  She gives me a look each morning though (after she knows my coffee cup is empty) that says “Let’s go buddy!”  Part of me thinks that I might be able to train her to keep other runners away in an actual 5k (the only way I would ever finish in front of the pack).

Jon