What to do help

[Notsobigdoug]

Hi everyone officially I’m on wk8 but I’ve never been one to stick to rules and I’ve completed two 30 minute runs one on Friday and one today. I know people will moan and say stick to plan but I know my limits. I even did 10 minutes on a bike and 10 minutes on a cross trainer then finished with a swim. So if I run for 30 minutes on Tuesday does that mean I can say I graduated. Ps please go easy on me 😂

[Oldfloss Administrator Graduate]

Nope... check this out

Taken from the Graduation post...

"We would like to clarify the position of earning your Graduation badge.

To get your badge you will have completed the full training podcasts and be able to run for 30 min.

It does NOT matter if you cannot run 5km, you are a graduate after running 30 min for three times.

So it is fair to everybody, please do not ask for your badge until you have completed Week 9 run 3"

Sorry ...but.... you know you can do it.. so do it... right through Week 9

[IannodaTruffe Mentor]

You are putting too much emphasis on a badge and maybe not enough on the discipline of following a training plan. This becomes ever more crucial as you move on in your running. It is inevitable that the more you run, the greater your injury risk, especially if not within the constraints of a carefully constructed training programme.

If you look at this post healthunlocked.com/couchto5... you will see that there are more informal rules or guides that need to be followed to increase both speed and distance post C25K.

My advice is that you will be better served by not being in so much of a hurry. Becoming a runner is not about ticking off runs on a plan, nor about missing runs on a plan. It is about building your ability, strength and stamina gently and safely. Injuries come about from pushing your body beyond what it is designed or conditioned to do. Training plans are based on safe progression and while you may well be capable of doing more than the plan suggests, just because you can does not necessarily mean you should. It is very easy to overestimate one's actual ability after completing a few hours of running on a programme like C25K. healthunlocked.com/couchto5....

Take care.

[Hidden]

I’ll go easy on you ... rules are rules, to get the badge you know what you have to do, no rule breaking allowed. That’s the thing about C25K club, we do talk about it.

But the graduation is just the start of your running life, then you can do pick and mix as much as you like!

So stick with the smarties for now and you can hit the m&ms, rhubarb and custards of running officially in just over a week’s time!

[GoogleMe Graduate]

I'm not sure what you are asking. It sounds as though you are saying that once you've got to 30 minutes 3 times you want your graduate badge/to say you have graduated?

One of the things C25K unexpectedly brought me was the ability to just shut the **** up and do as I am told sometimes. I'm not as cool and smart as I think I am, and whilst there are many ways to get fitter I had chosen of my own free will to do the C25K (and I liked it here)... yes the programme builds up so that you can run continuously for 30 minutes but regularly (so a minimum of 27 runs with a minimum of a day between each)... so trying to finish 'faster' demonstrates that whatever feats your body is capable of, your mind has some way to go... why accept your 'limits'? You speak as though you fear emotional injury if you continue with C25K. One of the things C25K offers is improved resilience - the ability to stick with things, the ability not to fall apart completely when other parts of your life get tough... People certainly do chafe against the programme in some way or another at this point - often a rubbish run in weeks 7-9 but there's an anxiety creeps in about 'what next?' which sometimes manifests itself exactly as you are experiencing.

It looks like you may have switched to the 'Boom and Bust' plan (which is undoubtedly much more 'popular' as a fitness and weight loss strategy than starting and completing C25K, just not very effective long term)

[With thanks to Rignold for pointing out I posted this in the wrong place previously, under one of your old posts]

[Notsobigdoug]

To be honest getting a badge don’t bother me one bit. I was more thinking that the program covers people who only run. I will carry on the program but will happily run the extra 6 minutes this week and if all is well I will complete the program in 5 more runs.

[Rignold]

If you are runnin 30 minutes you have completed the process of gettng to running 30 minutes regardless of how long it has taken you.

My father taught me to read before I went to school. When I was enrolled in school they were horrified and told him he may have done me irreparable damage. I then had to go back to unlearning how to read, then learning ITA (that awful phonetic reading experiment of the early 70's) then how to read again. The teachers then hailed it as a triumph that I had learned to read well following the plan.

If you are comfortably running 30 minutes now you really do not need to spend another couple of weeks running less than that just to get up to the official 30 minutes. There is a difference between using a training plan and signing up to rigid dogma. Interval training is not Scientology.

[GoogleMe Graduate in reply to Rignold]

There's a difference between being able to run for 30 minutes/interval training and considering you've graduated from the NHS version of C25K which has that little 'regularly' in there... and people don't usually ask if they are sure they are right... and not just doing a ner-ner-ner-ner-ner... (yeah, we've had a few of those in the past, fitter in body than in social skills)

It's a programme open to anyone and as such is perfectly open to be tweaked (eg plenty of people give it another go round returning from injury and as such won't necessarily wish or need to follow it exactly) No one, I think, is suggesting that @biggydoug should feel that he has to run less than 30 minutes (Week 9 is all 30 minutes anyway) for the remaining runs of his minimum 27.

But there are many personal histories which shout very loudly the potential or actual benefits to the individual of completing the programme in full.