Running report wk 3

It was a strange 'week 3' [8 days] in running land. I had my first almost stitch. ow. Also I hadn't paid attention to what the interval change was going to be for week 3 so the first time I listened to the podcast I almost walked into a wall.


2 [90 sec] intervals and 2 intervals of 3 minutes?! Basically my totals don't change, I am still only running for 9 minutes total but the duration of the interval doubled for 2 of them. I am thinking my notion of gradual increase is not the same as other people. The whole 5 minute warm up I grumbled to myself 'why not an increase of 5 intervals of 2 minutes' but then I went for it. It was hard but doable. It felt fairly discouraging though to be working so much harder and to not see my totals really change, although I think my distance went up from 2/3 of a mile to 3/4.

After the first grueling week 3, run one, run two was fairly easy. At least I knew what to expect. I had a nice long rest between them so that helped. Week 3, run 3 I did yesterday and it was back to grueling. I was also conflicted, 'should I start week 4 the next time?' 'should I keep at this pace for awhile?'. I knew I couldn't handle another big surprise so I went and looked at Week 4.

2 intervals of 3 minutes and 2 intervals 5 minutes in length, increasing the total running minutes from 9 to 16 [running about 1.5 miles] and decreasing the amount of walking recovery. In fact by the end of week 5 I am supposed to be running 20 minutes [2 miles] with no break at all.

This is when I knew that C25K's idea of gradual and mine had widely diverged. So I am moving on to week 3.a of my own devising. Since I will no longer have the wonderful podcasts to time things for me and tell me when to run or walk I will need to pay attention more to distance than time, although I will keep track of my over all time. [if I can remember it]

So I'll start with a 5 minute walk and then do my intervals by track length hereby referred to as TL. I'll run =1TL, walk=1TL, run=2TL, walk=2TL, then repeat those intervals, then cool down walk. That should have me running about a mile, and each interval is a slightly longer run. This is more my idea of a gradual increase. I hope I'm not aiming too low, I do want to keep on with this, but I am just not ready to jump to their week 4.

I am really going to miss those podcasts this week. Wish me luck implementing this, it requires way more brain power.