After a fabulous graduating run last Thursday (finishing the whole 5K in 36.37mins) something happened.
I was as pleased and delighted with myself as anyone could be after graduating, so I geared up to my first 'graduate' run on Sunday. After 9 weeks of solidly getting better and better each run (Runkeeper keeps congratulating me, so it must be true), I couldn't do it. I actually had to stop at 26 mins. I came home and wept. Yes. Real tears. What a wuss. And I couldn't face Runkeeper who I knew was embarrassed for me.
Now I love the internet because the WWW tells me there are such things as bad runs and not to over-think it. Just get over it.
Today, however, I was rather apprehensive about another rubbish run, so I downloaded the C25K+ and ran around my (hilly) area rather than along the beach. It started off SO slowly and I ran 8.22min/km rather than my 7.12min/km of the 5K.
Moral of the story - if you have a bad run, just slow down the next one and it makes you feel champion again.
Written by
portugirl
Graduate
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Wise words. I graduated last week too and haven't enjoyed my runs since, but have done them anyway. Suffering from cough and cold and I downloaded the 5k+ podcasts but only managed 5 minutes before I decided I didn't like being told when to step so went back to week 9 podcast and am doing that. I may just download some music and run for 30 minutes and aim for 5 k once a week. It's still better than I was doing 10 weeks ago (on couch!) and I struggle to find more time than 30 minutes so marathons are a long way off!!!
I graduated C25K in Nov, and have gradually built up my distance since then to 10km on weekdays and 14km at weekends. I still have bad runs, although I dont think of them as bad runs.
For instance tuesday last week I only managed 8km in my 1 hour run, when I would normally do 10km. But I knew that the 14km run on sunday had probably tired my legs, and that they hadnt fully recovered. By thursday evening I was back to a 10km run, and then at the weekend I knocked 3 minutes off my 14km run.
One thing I've noticed, and not only with running, but with cycling and indoor rowing too, is that the thing which lilits my performance seems to alternate between breathing and muscle fatigue. For a couple of days or so it will be the tiredness of my legs that dtermine my speed, and my breathing will be easy. Then my legs will feel happy and light and the limiting factor will be being out of breath. It's actually quite nice to be alternating between the two on different runs, it means that some of my runs are forced to be a bit slower, and are "easy breating runs" :).
I did the C25K on 3 runs per week, but since then I've run every other day. That is, until this weekend, when I decided to postpone my saturday run until sunday. The reason is that I felt my legs had been getting more and more tired, and probably needed a little extra rest. The result was my best 14km time so far I will continue to run every other day, but will add an extra day rest when I feel I need it.
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Best piece of running advice ever? There is no such thing as a bad run!
