Post graduation app withdrawal symptoms and shaking out the rust from those holiday legs!

[lardofale]

Hi gang! A new experience today with my first run without the soothing encouragement of Michael Johnson to keep me on track and calm, missing that smooth operator already! Graduation was such a buzz, it felt like passing my driving test in as much as I wanted to go out immediately and prove to the world that I was the new Mo Farah or, to go with the analogy, the new Ayrton Senna. As with those heady new driving days of the summer of 1990 I resisted and took a break. Now freshly back from a relaxing holiday with the family my alarm blasted out a 5:15am to indicate that the holiday is over, work is starting again today, get your backside out of bed and get those legs pumping again.

I thought it would be hard to get going again and without the structure and advice from the app I did find it tough but only in the sense of timing. I hit a steady pace fairly soon into the session and reached a point where my first half hour had got me recently. As a new start I felt that was far enough, I didn't want to burn out and potentially get disheartened. The strava on my phone told me that it was 4.3k and 27 minutes so I'm quite pleased with that, though slightly miffed that I misjudged the timing so I now have a basic Garmin watch on it's way to me stop the guessing.

The next new experience will be my first parkrun in Lowestoft in a couple of weeks, i'll let you guys know how that goes.

[Bluebirdrunner Graduate]

Good work Lardofale😊..

Consolidation is key...keep posting as it helps with motivation too😎x

[lardofale Graduate in reply to Bluebirdrunner]

Thanks Jan, will do! It's great to be able to offer advice to people who are where I was not so long ago and read about other people's post C25K experiences too.

[Oldfloss Administrator Graduate]

Well done ..consolidate those 30 minute runs... try not to focus on speed particularly.. try shorter runs, and some longer runs too. New routes help and then after a bit, try the C25k+ podcasts.. great for helping us with the different disciplines!!

As Bluebirdrunner suggests..keep posting too.. then if you fancy it, in a while, head over to Bridge to 10K... we are a friendly bunch over there too

[lardofale Graduate in reply to Oldfloss]

Thanks madam mentor! Your advice is always very valuable, I'll take it on board and see where this all leads 😁👍

[Whatsapp Graduate]

Nice one. Time to shred the regime of c25k and embrace the freedom to just take it wherever you darn well wanna.

A few get a bit lost after graduation. I think it takes a while to realise that you just need to keep the consistency going, and when your ready, start trying new things.

You will love park run!!

[lardofale Graduate in reply to Whatsapp]

Thank you! I'll wriggle out of the app shackles and bask in the freedom! Looking forward to the park run, looks fun!

[Hidden]

As a fellow smoothie who hopes to graduate this week, I am interested to see how you get on, as I am worried about not having the liquid velvet to keep me going. But first lesson seems to be to think about my timing. I may still then use map my run and the mechanical woman to keep me on track Thanks for sharing the experience it's really useful to learn these lessons in advance if you can. .

[lardofale Graduate in reply to Hidden]

Pleasure Mrs JCR! I'm out again on Wednesday to try other things with just music and no MJ, hopefully it'll be easier still.

Good luck for run 3, see you in the Graduate ranks shortly! 😁

[Hidden in reply to lardofale]

Thanks hopefully tomorrow.... good luck for you too on Wednesday with the music and no Smooth.