Well yesterday I completed W5R3 but not feeling as elated as I hoped.
In Week 4 I had my first "f-word" on Run 3. The route I have been running is fairly flat but I knew that as my distance increased I would be coming up to a steep hill, so I decided to switch to a slightly different route in the same park that would get me to the same point but over a more gradual incline. As luck would have it I hit the incline just as Laura announced there was just 60 seconds left of the first 5-min run and suddenly the gradual incline turned out to be a massive hill! I struggled valiantly on but had to admit defeat and slow to a walk before the 5 mins was up, though I completed the rest of the workout.
When I got home I realised I had actually run further than on the previous run, so had obviously been going faster which was probably my problem (in addition to the hill!). So I found myself a completely new route in a different flatter park and tried to tell myself to slow down.
Last Monday I repeated W4R3 (successfully!) and as I didn't want to get behind did the Week 5 runs on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. All went well until I woke up Sunday morning feeling hungry and totally lacking energy, which I put down to not having eaten much the day before. I had a larger than normal breakfast and waited an hour but still didn't feel much better, but set out for the run as I knew I would be too busy to fit it in the afternoon or evening.
I was kind of dreading the thought of running for 20 mins non-stop but started out ok. By ten minutes in I would have happily slowed to a walk. By 15 minutes in I could have easily thrown myself down on the nearest bench in a pathetic heap. But I kept going and made it to the end!
When I got home instead of the usual elation at having completed a challenging run I just felt exhausted and a couple of hours later I got the first symptoms of a cold. By evening the cold had fully developed and I'm now feeling pretty rotten
So now I'm not sure if pushing myself to do four runs last week was a mistake and left me vulnerable to a cold (I seemed to get a lot of colds during previous attempts to take up running years ago)? Or if W5R3 felt so tough because I was already getting ill?
I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to take a break from running this week and need to repeat Week 5 which I'm not looking forward to!
[OK, lengthy moan now over! ]