End of Week 4- a couple of questions..

[Xirokia]

Hi Guys!

Anyone else struggling with this heat? It's driving me crazy!

First run of this week, I couldn't do it at all, I barely finished the three minutes before the swarms of midges and general mardy-ness of myself made me finish the podcast early.

Second run I finished with no problems, I also changed my route a little as I only have a small park near me and was getting sick of seeing the same hills and mud. It was also a little cooler so felt easier to run.

Today, I did my final run but had to stop before the last five minutes as I was getting light-headed. I hadn't had much sleep last night and very little water. I'm staying a mate's place and used a different park (in Norfolk, so no hills!) but the heat was just too much.

Do you guys think I should redo this podcast again, or move on the next?

Also, I've been using the Nike+ app on my ipod which measures your distance/time/calories burned and I noticed that I've apparently been going pretty quickly- making 3.73km today, even though I didn't do that 5 minutes and 3.76 on Weds, doing the whole podcast (but over hills!). I don't feel like I'm going too fast- I actually feel pretty damn slow- but was wondering if this is an average or not, because it seems like a lot of people have said it's unlikely to hit 5km by the end of week 9. Is it because of the breaks that I'm able to keep up the pace or should I actually (dare I say it) be proud that I can actually keep a good pace?

Sorry if that doesn't make much sense- like I said, I've had hardly any sleep!

Also, I'm writing a full blog on measureformeasurelife.blogs... which tends to go into more detail about each run, so please do check it out as I'm doing all this for charity (but I haven't updated it this week, because I've been lazy)

Hope you're all doing well

[Jany]

Hiya!

Well done on going back for more even though it sounds like you've had a couple of tough runs.

I think re-do the last run when you're well rested and hydrated. It's important that you complete each run before you move on or else the next week might feel too much for you and you'll feel defeated. Bear in mind that week 5 involves a 20 minutes run so don't rush into it until you're ready.

As far as the distance you're covering, it's great but I wouldn't pay too much attention to it! I found depending on the ratio/lengths of running/walking the distances I cover changed week on week. Ironically, the greater the proportion of running I did in a podcast- the less distance I covered! I think it's easier to go quickly for 3 or 5 minutes than 20. I got given some very good advice on here yesterday which was don't worry about your pace/speed yet. Get to the end of the programme and then see where you are.

Happy running!

[Stubbyp Graduate]

I agree entirely with Jany, repeat the run before moving on, there's no rush to get to the next week, make sure you're comfortable with the current run before moving on as it quickly ramps up the length of run. Also don't worry about distance, it's all about running for a length of time. The programme should be called couch to 30 mins, and if you happen to make it to 5k then great.

I definitely recommend finding a park that is big enough that you don't run round it numerous times. We've used three parks as our runs got longer so that we had a longer circuit to use. We also alternate the direction in which we run, or start in different places.

Keep up the good work!