What to do.

[Heidi172]

I got up to week 7 of couch to 5k. Failed, went back to week 6...succeeded and then tried week 7 again. But failed...my left knee is painful as I have a cyst. My job is very physical, walking upto 12-13,000 steps alone at work. I have given the knee two weeks rest, just

Light exercise. But I want to start running again. I am 55 6ft and about 17 stone, I hv lost 31 pounds since beginning of the year...any advice on where I should start?

[SC1472 Graduate]

If you have rested for two weeks, maybe start with week 6 just to give yourself the confidence that your knee with hold out (but I am NO expert here). To be honest, it's only really you that can decide what your body/legs/knee feel like.

I struggled with week 7 with many 'practice' runs (not allowed to use the F word here!). The frustrating thing was that I had done the 25 minutes at the end of week 6 but I just couldn't get week 7 to work. I decided that I needed to build myself up to the full 25 minutes so I would try and run further before stopping, and I made sure that I ran for a full 25 minutes by pausing the app with my 'recovery walk'. This isn't technically the way it should be done, but it worked for me as I succeeded after three attempts.

[Dpsl Graduate]

SC1472 's suggestion to restart at w6 sounds like a good one. Then, when you've done r3, instead of letting the prospect of w7 scare you, just do another r3 of w6. Do it twice more and you'll have done w6 r3 four times - equivalent to finishing w6 and w7. (Yes, it's all mind games at this point...!) 😊