Friday, December 30, 2011

End of Couch to 5k and the start to Janathon

Well, starting Couch to 5k really hasn't helped my plan to blog more really. I was going to keep whoever can be bothered to read this blog updated with my progress.

Well, I made good progress. I finally made it to 5k on the treadmill. My next challenge was to do a parkrun - a 5k race around a local park. My first one was round Finsbury Park. Unfortunately, what I didn't realise was that I was in no way prepared for running in "real life". Running on actual tarmac is a lot harder work than on the treadmill. Plus there are these things called hills. I started off far too fast and it starts down a hill. What goes down, must go up, and I struggled to get up the other side. I started walking on the steeper bit near the half way point. Of course at that point I didn't realise that I had to go round a whole another time. Exhausted at right at the back, I had to go round again. On the second lap, I started to feel sick after eating too much breakfast and had to slow down to a walk again. I didn't know which was the turn off to come around and took a turn far too early. This meant I caught up with the end of the pack, so I waited until the back markers I recognised went past me and joined in after them. Not a great run for me all in all, but I did manage 4.7k in under 40 minutes. And learnt a valuable lesson in not eating too much before a run or taking it too fast at the start. My second attempt, a few weeks later, went a lot better, at the inaugaural Highbury Fields parkrun, and I tried really hard to run throught the whole 5k. I made it! I was the second to last but I'd run the whole distance and completed the Couch to 5k training.
So, my next challenge is to start Janathon. This involves doing some form of exercise and blogging every day, so this should increase my blogging for the next month at least!