After working my way up to week 7 day 2 (as of yesterday) I decided to join up to the community. I started running for the first time in my life at age 64 back in September and now I have entered a 5k in January and have come over all serious with new properly fitted shoes, running gear and a Garmin 610 which is great except I should really stop running, put my glasses on to check my pace, then put my glasses away and start running again, which I don't think is really the idea!
I have had several low level and one major health issue over the past few years and had ruled out any exercise as something that had simply passed me by but having on a whim and family pressure started doing a set of Yoga exercises every morning, I looked back today and noted that I have been exercising for 21 weeks everyday without a break. About 3 months into the Yoga seemingly out of nowhere I knew that I had to start running. I was in part inspired by my son taking it up and by meeting an inspirational 21 year old Paralympic athlete .
Before I even started and to commit myself to running I bought some running shoes on line which was a mixture of naivety and vanity, they looked very nice but were one size too small and were 'barefoot' so when I eventually started running I found that one shoe was just OK and the other too small and 'barefoot' shoes and hard surfaces just hurt!
I found the Couch25K perfect, it was clearly well worked out not only in terms of the gradual improvements it brings about but also the psychology behind what 'Laura' was saying. Although part of me knew that thousands had listened to the same words as I was listening to, there were times when it seemed as if Laura was talking just to me as what was said was just what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. This really came home to me when I did my first 25 min run, after the normal "that's five minutes gone" I was waiting for a "ten minutes gone" which seemed logical but then I heard " that's twelve and a half minutes and half way", it gave me a real sense of achievement as I had gone further than I thought I had. Running for me is now as much about psychology as it about physical effort. Looking forward to 5k still seems scary from where I am now, running 3.5km in 25 mins (thanks Garmin 610) as it was when I was at week 2 and looked ahead and saw that I was expected to survive running 8 mins!
Fitness seems to have crept up on me without me really noticing and suddenly at the end of my first 25 mins 'Laura' was suggesting upping the pace for the last minute so I did and indeed I could. Yesterday I pushed it a bit more just to make sure that the last session was not a fluke and at the "5 mins to go" I upped the pace and when I finished, put my glasses on, taken them off again to wipe the 'steam' off them and checked my Garmin I had run for 400metres longer in the same time as I had only two days before.
Finishing week 7 tomorrow and on to the start of week 8 on Tuesday.
this is great community everyone is very nice and very suppportive, we have all started at Week1 to begin the amazing journey to week 9 Run3 and beyond , It is amazing to see what we can achieve not just physically 
Worth the wait
Wk6 runs 2&3 - abandoned start to wk7 :-( 
3 x 30 mins done!
Week6 Done!
W8R2 cause of sore ankle bone discovered
