Oh dear! Week Nine Done - a great achievement, but tinged with sadness. Having had the excellent structure that is the c25k plan to guide me, things will never quite be the same again. I have so enjoyed running with Laura and her dodgy music. Some of it will even be missed. I have come to realise that, for me, the journey has been even more important than the destination. Graduating is an important point in my running journey - but it's simply the end of the beginning, 'cause there's a lot of runnin' to do.
Week Nine was the grown-up version of Week Eight. I ran at a similar pace to Weeks Eight and Seven. It's certainly not easy running for these sorts of time yet, but it feels as though I could keep going for longer if my life depended on it. So as a special treat on my graduation run, I ran for the full 5km and did it in 32min 7sec, which incidentally was exactly the same pace as 9.2, and quite similar to all the runs from 6.3 onwards - just a slight increase in pace discernable over time.
Although I've come to the end of c25k, things will be very similar for the immediate future. What I intend to do is act like a scoundrel and cast Laura and her podcasts aside and now place my affections on the c25k app, and continue repeating Week Nine with each of the app trainers in turn - a week with Jo, then one with Sanjeev, then Sarah and then Michael. And I'll repeat all of that, seven runs a fortnight, hopefully, until running for 30 minutes is less of a challenge than it is currently. Yes, I know how to have a good time. Perhaps I'll even manage 5k within 30 mins, along the way, but I'm not too worried about that. And I'll be compiling my own music playlists of course. Won't that be fun? I already have the first waiting. All songs play at around 90 or 180 beats/minute, so they will keep my feet moving to my preferred 180 steps/minute. This is all my way of still having some structure in which to run now that I'm finished with Laura but to still have a connection to the Plan. To that end, my first playlist includes five songs from the album that has the Julie song on it (proper title Chained Up Melody). The album is called Electric Indieland by Vasco, Maitreya Jani. There's an even "better" song than Chained Up Melody, IMO, on it. It's another song about a (young) man who's having love problems and is called Maybe Maybe. It includes the immortal line, "And how come you're always on the run, but you've got time to do your nails." Definitely a classic. Believe it or not, I got out of bed this morning with the song running through my head! Other songs on my first playlist include Blood Makes Noise - Suzanne Vega; One of Us - Joan Osborne (short version without the strange intro); Even I - Vedera; Hurts Like Heaven - Coldplay. All runnable at around 180 steps/min. Next playlist will definitely include some Green Day, Eric Clapton and The Who.
I would like to thank all on this forum for the help and encouragement that they are, whether they realise it or not - chances are that includes YOU. Grateful thanks are due to HealthUnlocked and the admins that make this site the very special place that it is, and finally a particularly big, large, huge, immense thank you to Oldfloss and IannodaTruffe for their tireless help, humour, experience and wisdom freely shared.
Wish you a lot more great running in music!
So it could be au revoir rather than good bye. Enjoy your post 5K running 
Week Nine, Run Three
Week 5 run 1 done 🎉
Week Nine - Sore Achilles (first time poster)
Week 7 run 1 complete, despite brief interruption by the Village People!
