So last week was Week5 and it was a big one. I had decided that I would move from a Monday/Wednesday/Friday to a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday to allow me to participate in my local ParkRun on the Saturday morning. The Week 5 run 3 was a challenge in itself anyway where you had to run for 20 minutes continuously so I thought that it would be better to run with a crowd then on my own which I have been doing up to now. When I got there and warmed up and found that a friend of mine who is a long distance running (marathons and 10kms) was also there as he had not done much running this year and wanted to do some warm ups for the summer runs. He said that he would pace me for the run as for him it was exercise and not a race. I stayed with him for 15 minutes before having to step it back a bit and let him go on ahead. I completed the 5km in 31:04 so I was happy with that. I did have to do some walking/running but was glad of the achievement considering that 5 weeks ago I could not even run 1 minute without feeling tired.
One of the big learning's was that running in a crowd is something else. Up to this point I had only run on my own pace and alone, so now running with 500 others was a challenge especially at the start as I had more energy then others and was overtaking a lot of people. When I got to 3km I was doing a few mins of running, and then a minute of walking. I stayed level with a group that were running at the same times so that was fine for me and while I ended up 356th in the end of it I could not have achieved any of it without the couch to 5km plan so thanks to everyone (including Laura) at the NHS C25K program for helping me.
I am now going to wait until week 8 before the next Parkrun and see how I fare then.
Week 7 Run 3. Parkrun
Parkrun run report :)
