Well, this is the most challenging part so far, certainly after the 20 minute non stop run of week 5, its the biggest 'stumbling block'. Although I feel that once you are here you can't lose , if you stop at 18 minutes you will have that stamina for next time, and you will do it. If you do it second time round you will be much more in control of your breathing. Definately a long haul activity this!
I didn't find this easy for a number of reasons, mainly I ran to fast at the start, but in a way I am glad as at the end of 25 minutes I was pretty worn out and didn't fancy trying to push on and run the last two kilometres. So now I am really sticking to the plan.
You can only run your own race, there were a lot of distractions today, speed walkers walking at exactly the same pace as I was running, that is really off putting!
Anyway, in trying to avoid the speed walkers and other distractions I upped my pace to a higher level than I wanted but in doing so I found it less hard on the knees, at least that is how it felt. I have been way behind the pace of the couch25k dot com plan that I am following (not exactly the same as the NHS one) and this one gives a target of 25minutes OR 3.6km) , so thats exactly what I ran 3.6km in 25 minutes, faster than I wanted, so had to walk rest of the circuit back although I did run about 300 yards just to loosen up my legs at the end.
That is a big achievement to reach, even if I never got to 5km , I would mark a 25 minute run non stop as pretty impressive, especially for people who do it and have health problems etc. The other thing is if anyone reads this before doing it is that yes its tiring but you recover faster from it than the 20 minute run which knocked the stuffing out of me.
I noted lap times and I was running about 12% faster this time, dunno why exactly, I had sore calves for a while in the last few runs;
7.43mins
7.19
7.07
9.21
9.38 jogged/shuffled a few hundred yards here..