I took a long break during the winter. I’ll need to restart C25K again.
C25K
I picked up running as a hobby to improve my health. Starting from week 2, I was actually looking forward to each running day.
Week 1
The first week was hard as I didn’t know what I was doing. I ran too fast despite the podcast’s advice about slowing down. My form was bad, and my running shoes were unfit, all of those factors resulted in hurting my knees after the second day.
I had to take 2 weeks off for my knees to recover. That time was a humble experience. As I could barely stand on my feet, I was limping around and saw ever walkers passing me by. I learn a lesson to set and keep to my slow pace. With my knee pain, if I tried to speed up to keep up with other people, I would only hurt myself more and lengthen the recovery time. If I was good with words, I would say something along the line that the lesson also applies to the rest of my life.
Week 2
After 2 weeks break, I got new running shoes and a FitBit watch. I had to constantly remind myself to slow down. My legs burnt after every day, but I did it without hurting myself.
Week 3
I started yoga to improve mobility and to hopefully avoid future injury.
The first day was a lot easier than I expected. My jogging was slower than my walk speed. I finished the day while I still had some energy to continue. But I didn’t push myself to do more, it was good enough for now.
I googled how slow should my jog be, and found out that low intensity trainings helped build speed over time. During the running session, my heart rate was around 150, which was considered to be low intensity. Hopefully I had been doing the right thing by slowing down my speed to this heart rate.
Week 4
Week 4 was a major step up from the previous week. There were moments where I felt like running with correct postures instead of slow jogging. When everything was working correctly, my legs didn’t feel too much sore.
Week 5
This was yet another step up from week 4. After the third day of continuous 20 minutes jogging, I found out that the first 5-10 minutes were hardest. After the first 10 minutes, running became a lot easier. My mind was clear, my legs was moving without soreness. Everything seemed to align correctly, running felt great.
Week 6
After jogging non-stopped for 20 minutes last week, I thought I could jog faster. Turned out I wasn’t ready yet, I had to slowed down because my leg was so sore when I tried to increase my pace.
Week 7
I learnt from experience that the first 10 minutes was always the hardest, and it still didn’t make it easy.
Week 8
I changed my running route, and it was a lot easier than I anticipated. My pace was slow 11 minutes per km and my heart rate is below 150. I could increase my pace, but I didn’t know if I could keep it for the whole 28 minutes.
The last run of week 8 was horrible. My left leg felt heavy throughout the run, I could barely lift it. I still finished it though.
Week 9
It wasn’t a big jump from previous week, so the extra minutes were barely noticeable.
I finished the program with 12min/km pace and 132 average bpm.
I found out during the last day that I could use my arms swinging back and forth to increase and decrease my pace.
Week 10
The first run after I finished the program, I went all out and tried to run as fast as I could. My pace was 9min/km and average bpm went up from 132 to 155, but I was absolutely exhausted after the run.
Break
The third week after finishing C25K, I felt something wrong with my leg during a run. I couldn’t finish the run and had to take a few breaks walking home.
I took a 2-weeks break due to the injury and also to travel to Disney World.
Second Break
My running time started to get worse, even though I had been running regularly. At first, I thought it was due to overtrain, so I took another week-long break. The first run after the break wasn’t any better, and my feet hurt even if I jogged slowly.
I then realized that I had used my shoe (ASICS Nimbus 24) for over 4 months, so I bought a new pair of ASICS GT-1000 11. Running in the new shoes felt a lot better, I could increase my speed without much leg pain. My time went back to 10m30s/km.
I think I’ll change running shoes whenever my running time got worse and my legs hurt.
First 5K
I started C25K in April, and 4 months later after a lot of breaks, injuries and setbacks, I finished my first 5K in 55 minutes.