Couch 2 5k–Week 9

This was it, the last week in the training program.  Even though I did not follow the training program exactly after week 5, I still had the end goal in mind; namely to run 5k.

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
17 minutes	22 minutes 40 seconds	25 minutes 10 seconds

Day 1 of this week did not begin well.  I have my excuses.

• Week 8 entailed the sister-in-law and mother-in-law staying with us for the entire week.  Consequently, the wife and I had an excuse not to eat well (or in my case keep up my water intake).  I did OK during week 8 but I really felt it Monday morning.
• The son decided he would like to start running with me.  He made it all of 1/4 mile before he had to start walking.  He kept going on the path and I caught him right as I was completing lap 3 (2.1 miles).  Seeing him at that line was excuse enough to stop.
• I began to have the most serious doubts about being able to run a 5k.  Why punish myself on this day if I was never going to make it anyway?

Day 2 was much better and even though the son decided to run with me again, I was feeling much better health-wise with a few good days of better food behind me.  I stopped after 4 laps (2.8 miles) and began to think for the first time since Day 1 of Week 1 that I might, just might be able to make it 5k on Day 3.

Day 3 almost did not happen as the radar showed a lot of rain heading our way and a peak outside showed lightning strikes nearby.  I put on my running shoes and got Nina’s leash thinking that if it was too bad I would just walk a lap with the Doberman and be done.  After 1/2 lap (where my jogging start line is located) I decided to go for it.  The first 3 laps were fine and it was only about 1/2 way through the 4th lap that I began to start the conversation to compromise on how far I would run.  It does not help that the last 1/2 of the lap starts the steepest uphill portion of the lap.  As I could see the corner where I would turn and start my 5th lap I thought to myself “If I could ask myself during any of those times I was running in the previous 8 weeks if I should quite or not, how would I answer?”  From that thought process I mustered up the strength to continue on and finish the last 3+ minutes until the 5k mark.  It helped slightly that the initial portion of the lap is downhill.  Long story short, I made it.  I ran a 5k right on time and according to schedule.  25 minutes is not an impressing time really but my goal was not time related.

The only question now is, “Now what?”  I have not thought of where to go from here.  Do I want to run an actual 5k race?  Do I even want to continue running at all?  I have not decided yet.  I will probably run Monday morning but I am not sure how long (distance or duration).  I can tell you one thing though, I have no desire to run a 10k.

Jon

Couch 2 5k–Week 8

I discovered an error this week that I have been making.  Fortunately it is an error in my favor.  First though here is what I ran this week…

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
20 minutes	21 minutes	22 minutes

As you can see, I was able to add 1 minute per day as was my plan.  I was thinking as I was running on Day 2 (Wednesday) that I do not really want to be a runner.  In fact for most of my running days over the past 2 weeks there are about 10 minutes when I think this.  They are usually from around the 8 minute mark until about 3 minutes to go.  For the rest of the week, I am happy with running and my progress thus far.  Obviously I pushed through those 10 minute sessions and did not quit.  I am happy to report that I did not feel that way on Day 3 (Friday) of this week.  Maybe I might just turn into a runner after all.

Now as for my error. 

Above is a picture of my running route for the past 2 weeks.  This is the edition we currently live in and I have only ran it the past 2 weeks.  Previous to that I headed out (to Hudson Crossing) and ran along the bike path.  There is a lot more foot traffic (and paw traffic) so it is a little distracting since I have Nina (my Doberman) with me when I am running.  She does pretty well, it is the other dogs that typically do not.  Due to this issue I decided to keep my running along the path you see above.  Well there was one more thing, sprinklers.  The bike path has some very big sprinklers that water the grass along the way.  These things must shoot 30 feet and they really cause Nina to freak out.  Running is hard enough without having to drag a 70 lbs. dog who has her paws dug in to avoid the sprinklers.  Anyway, I changed my running route.

I think I have mentioned before that the entire Couch 2 5k plan is based on a 10 minute mile (6 mph) when jogging.  When the plan says run 1/2 mile it always added “or 5 minutes”.  Since there was no way to gauge how far I was running, I stuck with measuring my running by the amount of time that I ran.  I kept in the back of my mind that I was running 6 mph and did the math accordingly.  When I ran for 17 minutes then I assumed that I ran 1.7 miles.  To back that math up, I can run the above pictured path in about 6 minutes (slightly less than 6 minutes actually).  When we first moved into the neighborhood I think we drove around it once and it measured 0.6 miles.  This made sense in my head as if I was running 0.6 miles in 6 minutes then I was running a 10 minute mile (just like the Couch 2 5k plan assumes).  There is only one problem, the above route is actually 0.7 miles (according to Google maps).

All this time I thought I was failing the Couch 2 5k pace based on timing when if I had just based it on distance I would have realized that I was really on pace.  The goal is to run a 5k by the end of week 9.  At the rate I am going I will be running 25 minutes on Day 3 (Friday) of next week.  If I run the above route in 5:40 (what I ran it in on Friday of this week) then I am running at a pace that will see me finish a 5k in 25 minutes and 8 seconds.  So, I am right on pace.  Ever since I discovered this yesterday afternoon I have been on a sort of runner’s high.  I will actually hit the 5k mark right on time.

Just to be sure, I drove 3 laps around the neighborhood and can confirm that it is just over 0.7 miles (the odometer hit 2.1 about 50 feet before I completed my last lap).  This correction has made me thing I might be a runner after all.

Jon

Couch 2 5k–Week 7

Since I have failed day 3 for weeks 5 and 6 and since week 7 (and 8 and 9) are just solid running, I had to improvise.  Since week 9 (the last week) of the training has you running for 30 minutes I still need to keep that as an end goal.  With that in mind I decided just to try to run 1 more minute each day until I get to 30 minutes.  I only made it 16 minutes last week so I used that as my starting point.  This will push the training out to 11 weeks but so be it.  I cannot let my failures thus far stop me from continuing on.  With that in mind, here is what I ran this week…

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
Jogged 17 1/2 minutes	Jogged 18 minutes	Jogged 19 minutes

Monday was pretty easy (hence the extra 30 seconds).  Actually every day was easier than I thought it would be.  Oh, I still entertained thoughts of stopping early at around the 14 minute mark each day but I pressed on instead.

I made myself a long mp3 file of mostly hard rock / heavy metal.  Ministry, The Offspring, Nirvana and Klank kept me going.  As a marker for how long I had ran, I found a wav file with the numbers 1 through 20 in Spanish and put the appropriate number at each minute interval.  So, every minute I get an update of how far I have gone and how far I have yet to go (using some quick mental math).  I am still encouraged and in 4 weeks I should be at my goal.  I have not picked out the 5k race that I am going to run yet.

Jon

Couch To 5k–Week 6

This week the rubber meets the road and (as you will see later in this blog) I was not quite up to the task.  Each day (as in all the previous weeks) begins with a brisk 5 minute warm-up.  Here is a summary of the balance of the days instructions…

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes) Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes) Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes) Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes) Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)	Jog 1 mile (or 10 minutes) Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes) Jog 1 mile (or 10 minutes)	Jog 2 1/4 miles (or 22 minutes) with no walking.

This is a ramped up version of week 5.  I summed up the total time and then added enough walking time at the end so that I was jogging / walking for 31 minutes total.

Day 1 with its 16 minutes of jogging was not too bad.  Day 2 was not all that bad but the final 3 or 4 minutes of the 2nd jogging session was really pushing me to my body’s limits.  Day 3 was where I failed (again).  If you remember last week’s Day 3 was only 20 minutes and I pooped out at 18 minutes (and 10 seconds).  I had the slight advantage of having 2 days rest (I did Day 3 on Saturday) but this week Day 3 was done on the normal Friday with only 2 days rest since Day 2.  As a result (and this is my excuse) I was only able to run for 16 1/2 minutes.

I am not sure where to go from here.  Weeks 7, 8 & 9 simply repeat the Week 6 Day 3 instructions that involve no walking whatsoever.  If I am only able to do 16 or 18 minutes then Week 7’s 25 minutes is way out of my league.  I have 2 days to figure it out.  I will have to let you know what I decided in next week’s blog entry.

Jon

Couch To 5k–Week 5

Week 5 changes things up a bit in that the instructions are different for each of the 3 days.  Each day (as in all the previous weeks) begins with a brisk 5 minute warm-up.  Here is a summary of the balance of the days instructions…

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes) Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes) Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes) Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes) Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)	Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes) Walk 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes) Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes)	Jog two miles (or 20 minutes) with no walking.

I summed up the total time and then added enough walking time at the end so that I was jogging / walking for 29 minutes total.

Last week I was running a total of 16 minutes so Day 1 was not too hard really.  I was not any more or less wore out than last week.  Day 2 was a little harder in that I was running for my longest distance (3/4 miles) twice.  Still though, I completed it without too much trouble.  Then there was Day 3.

The instructions seemed simple enough, jog for 20 minutes.  Ever since Week 1 Day 1 I have been thinking about Week 5 Day 3.  I had admitted to you before that I have not run more than 1 mile straight in my life and now I have to run 2 miles!  Normally I do my training on Monday / Wednesday / Friday but the wife and I got home late on Thursday night from a Stryper concert so I postponed Day 3 until Saturday.

I will admit to you now that I did not make it for 20 minutes.  I only made a little over 18 minutes but I have plenty of excuses (some of which I almost believe).

• All of the instructions assume a pace of 3 mph when walking and 6 mph when jogging.  I have long legs and I did not start out as a true couch potato so it is entirely possible (maybe even likely) that I did jog 2 miles even though I only jogged for 18 minutes (and 10 seconds).
• My walking / jogging path has me crossing only one intersection and at the time where I stopped jogging I was at that intersection.  At the other side of the intersection was a man with 2 small girls.  The man was posting a sign for a garage sale and I did not think that I could (in my tired state) contain the Doberman if the girls would freak out upon seeing her.  I had the option of NOT crossing the intersection but that would mean taking a hard left turn that Nina was not used to doing.  Since we have stuck to the same path now for 5 weeks so she is getting to be a like a walking horse who knows the trail.  Since she trots on my left side, this would mean me turning into her and in my tired state this sounded like an injury waiting to happen.
• I could have swore I was almost at 20 minutes based on my music.  Like past weeks, I made myself a 29 minute mp3 file with the jog / walk parts marked by interruptions in the music.  Since Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 were not the same instructions (like in previous weeks) I got messed up in my tracking of time based on where I was at in the mp3 file.  So basically I phyched myself out and thought I was closer to being done than I actually was.  This made the first 2 excuses above seem more reasonable since I thought I was only seconds away from finishing anyway.

Anyway, I forgave myself quickly and (though I thought about repeating Week 5 next week) I will move on to Week 6 on Monday.  Day 3 of Week 6 has me running for 22 minutes so I will see how far I can get then.

Jon

Couch To 5k–Week 4

he instructions on the Couch-To-5K page for week 4 are as follows…

Brisk five-minute warm-up walk, then:

Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds)
Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)
Walk 1/4 mile (or 2-1/2 minutes)
Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds)
Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)

They do not allow for any walking period after the last run which makes no sense to me so I added a 2 1/2 minute walk to the end.  This makes the total time 29 minutes (2.25 total miles).  This is a great deal more running than I did in week 3 (1.6 miles compared to 0.9) and the durations are longer along with the walking periods between them shortening.

Day 1 was a killer, especially the last 5 minute run.  When I finished that I felt my face becoming very flush.  When I arrived back home and took off my shirt I was quite surprised at the amount of sweat I had produced.  But, I got through it.  Days 2 and 3 were easier.

I woke up Friday morning with a sore left knee.  Every once in a while this happens and I do not know why.  I think I may just sleep wrong.  Whatever the cause I do not think it was due to running.  Something becomes inflamed and even sore to the touch on the outside bottom part of my knee (always the left one).  Due to this I postponed day 3 until Saturday.  This only gives me one day of rest before week 5 begins with its increased difficulty.

Nina (my Doberman co-trainee) was happy to see our driveway on day 1.  After drinking until her water bowl was dry she simply collapsed on the hardwood floor and did not move for a while.  Like me though, she did better on days 2 and 3.

Looking forward to next week, by Friday I will be running for 20 straight minutes.  Even now I cannot see myself doing that but we will have to wait and see.

Jon

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

Couch To 5k–Week 2

The instructions on the Couch-To-5K page for week 2 are as follows…

Brisk five-minute warm up walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

In the end (just like week 1 you are only running for 6 minutes total.  I had a slight problem with this as the math does not work out great.  Each group of 90 seconds of jogging and 2 minutes of walking is 3.5 minutes.  If you do that 4 times you get to 14 minutes.  Throw in the 5 minute warm up walk and you are only at 19 minutes.  In the end I just walked for 3 minutes at the end to get to 20 minutes (it made me feel better anyway).

As for the actual jogging part, the last 90 seconds was a little tough on Monday and Wednesday but not really.  Next week will pick up the pace a bit.

I had reached out to a former manager of mine (who is an avid runner) for advice on shoes.  I mentioned that I was only on day 1 of week 1 and one of his first questions was “Have you decided which 5k you will run?”  This week I was talking to my current manager (a former avid runner) and he asked the exact same question.  I fear that (like all things I suppose) running is going to contain a certain subset of people that may seem a little crazy to me at first in their love of the sport.  I also fear that I might become one of those people.

After next week I might have to consider getting some better running shoes.  This would involve going into a real shoe store (probably one that specializes in running [and probably one that caters to those fanatics that I am trying not to become]).  I will keep you posted.

Jon

Couch To 5k–Week 1

Now that the Outsourcing My Body project is over and done with I am looking for something to keep the momentum going.  If you are familiar with that project then you know that I am not good at setting goals (or more specifically to be motivated to think about setting goals).  Trying to meet a goal once it is set is something I can do easily enough (especially if there is a spreadsheet involved).  I sort of arrived at this project in a backwards way.

On the way home from church last Sunday the wife needed to stop by 2 stores.  Not particularly interested in either store, I decided to go to a 3rd store that was in the same strip of stores.  I took the son with me (more out of keeping the kids separated as they are in a funk lately about arguing constantly).  While in that store I saw a pair of running shoes on sale for a decent price.  They fit and I happened to have my clothing money with me (thank you Dave Ramsey) so I bought them.

My current manager (and my manager before him and a few teammates) used to run quite a bit so I thought that (if for no other reason to be able to discuss running with them) I would see if there were any training plans for beginning runners out there on the internet.  The first one that I happened upon was the Couch-To-5K plan.  It had a 9 week plan to get you up to running 3 miles (roughly 5k) and thus a new project (this one) was born.  Even though I am not a couch potato starting out, I think this will work for me.

There are several reasons why I do not call myself a couch potato…

1. I rarely sit on the couch.  Now this may be a trivial distinction but when I am sitting down it is mostly in my office chair (either at my work office or at my home office).  When I find myself in the family room with the rest of the family, they hog the couch and I tend either to stand up (I sit down all day at work) or I sit in the recliner.  Also, I do not find our current couch confortable.  It was a hand me down from my grandma and we really need to replace it (not so much due to it being old but in that it has that “80+ year old woman” décor that just does not go with the rest of our furniture – but beggars can’t be choosers).
2. I do not watch that much TV.  The wife and I watch a 30 minute show while drinking our first cup of coffee in the morning (we like The Colbert Report) and that is usually done in our bedroom.  Also, we do not have cable or satellite TV.  We have not had it since 2007.  We either watch a show online or we watch it on DVD.  We (as a family) are currently watching season 1 of I Love Lucy, season 1 of The Walton’s and season 2 of The A Team (don’t judge us).  Previously we watched all 10 seasons of Little House On The Prairie and the first 2 seasons of The Facts Of Life.
3. I spent the last 3 months or so working out or at least walking 1 1/2 miles each day.  I am not starting from scratch by any means.

So with that background information in mind you might believe me when I say that week 1 of this program was not too challenging.  The instructions were pretty simple.

Brisk five-minute warm-up walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Sounds simple but I did have a problem, namely how to keep time.  There is an app to download but I do not have a smart phone so I had to think a bit.  In the end I fired up Audacity and spliced together 20 minutes worth of music as one long mp3 file with sounds that occur at the allotted times when I should start or stop jogging.  This was kind of fun to do actually and right after I finish this blog I am going to start in on the week 2 mix (since there are different lengths of jogging and walking in week 2, I need a different mix).

I can remember getting up to being able to run 1 mile straight only one time in my adult life and that was right after I was first married (15 years ago).  For some reason there is something about being able to run a mile for me.  I don’t know why.  Being able to run 3 miles straight is something I cannot fathom right now so I will focus on getting to 1 mile and that does not happen until week 5.

Jon