Stitch killed consolidation run 1

[FlexFury]

First consolidation run and the worst run I’ve done the whole program gutted.

Last couple of weeks I’ve changed routes a bit which involve hills and this seems to be causing me stitch after the hill is complete maybe five minutes after.

I tried to slow it down maybe not enough, I powered through it the last few runs thinking it would get better but it’s not. Today I walked from about 20 mins and could not get back going again.

How do you guys combat stitch if you get it and when can you start to incorporate some hills? Maybe the ones I’m doing are too long too soon

[AlMorr Ambassador Graduate]

Perhaps the last sentence is exactly what you are doing, slow down a bit especially when running🏃 up the hills and have a two day break from runs rather than the 1 day off you have at the moment. 😊

[ArthurJG Graduate]

The idea of consolidation is that after 9 weeks of rapid improvement you need to establish your present level of achievement for a few weeks before trying to improve further. You can't keep improving at that rate forever, you need to stabilise and consolidate every so often. So yes, maybe it is just too soon to tackle those hills if they weren't part of your normal routine in C25k. What some people do is keep their long runs reasonably flat and do hill training separately on a different day of the week when they are not looking to cover much distance. One I've seen involves running 10 minutes at a slow pace to a hill THEN running up the hill for just fifteen seconds, WALKING back down and repeating that six times. Then a slow 10 minute run to finish. That's the first week, gradually it builds up to 30 seconds and ten repeats or something but the point is it's not your long run, the long run is mostly flat, slow paced and on a different day of the week. But consolidate with easy, flattish 30 -35 minute runs for a couple of weeks first.

[joannaj88]

I breathe in through my mouth and stick my stomach out as I’m doing it! I think it’s a tip on the C25K app at some point. If I do it and slow down it seems to help. I don’t get a stitch quite as often as I used to.