Trying C25k again after nearly 4 years, week 3.2. Week 4 looks daunting!?

[BDavies91]

Hello everyone,

Thank you for taking your time to read this and I hope you are well!

A few years ago I tried C25k and I definitely took it too fast, too much too soon and crashed hard. It put me off for a long time.

Since then I decided to do an access course to go to uni, graduated with first class honours and am now doing a masters of research in science and cardiac arrhythmia intervention.

I’m adition to this, I’ve met the love of my life and the woman I can picture my entire future with, finally I feel like my life is on track! What a lucky guy I am, honestly!!

The S.O. Runs half marathons and I’d love to go for runs with her, 5k here and there you know, equally - I’m puching wayyyy above my weight (figuratively) and I should definitely sort my health out for myself and because she deserves more too.

So here I am, I’m 6ft.2, I weighed 108kg when I stared and I’m now 100.5kg, am I too heavy to be running as much as C25k suggests?

I’ve been doing yoga for a few months (mostly just stress relief and some hip / leg limbering), and started C25k again 3 and a half weeks ago.

I finished week 3, the second run today. It was difficult, not going to lie! The muscles next to my shins felt like they were going to explode and I was soooooo out of breath.

It was very very cold running along the promonade (Portsmouth) but I did it anyway!

I glanced at week 4, man, it looks hard compared to week 3 - does anyone have some stories / triumphs / failures about week 4 to share?

Thanks so much for listening and I hope to be graduating in January!

- Ben

[IannodaTruffe Mentor]

Welcome to the forum and well done on getting started.

This guide to the plan is essential reading healthunlocked.com/couchto5...

Take it nice and easy and you will be fine.

Enjoy your journey.

[Hidden]

Don't be in a rush to move through the weeks if you're struggling, no problem if you repeat the odd one or fwo runs before moving on. If you're really stuggling maybe slow down a bit too. I've just graduated again after a break of a few years from running. Its been fine but has taken me more than 9 weeks.

[steviej99 Graduate]

Sounds like your doing great BD. Trust the plan, it works. Take it slow and steady, take at least one rest day or more. Each run and each week prepares you for the next. Embrace the forthcoming challenge! Keep posting on here, the community is great for support, advice and motivation. Good luck

[Hidden]

Sounds like you are in a good place! 🙂

I am due to do W4R1 today and when I looked at the times it goes from 9 minutes of running in W3 to 16 minutes in W4 😳. But as others say - trust the programme, go slow and if needed repeat some runs so your body can catch up! My ankle, shin and calf muscles are now in a better place than in W2 so hopefully you will find the same. A big sense of achievement comes from experiencing adversity but persevering! If it was too easy that sense of achievement from every run wouldn’t be there ironically!

[AlMorr Ambassador Graduate]

What an inspiring post from you 'BDavies91', I wish you all the very best with C25K and 'the love of your life'. As for week 4, yes the running time increases from 9 to 16 minutes, what I found complex about week 4 was that before I got my present Smartphone with all the latest apps on it, when I was doing C25K my old Smartphone had not got enough memory to have the C25K app, so throughout the whole program I did it all from memory from my Laptop before I did any of the runs. Week 4 with all the different times of walks and runs was the most complex to remember, I did OK, the easiest runs to remember were week 5 run 3, a straight 20 minutes and the runs of weeks 7, 8 and 9, 25, 28, and 30 minutes respectively. Good luck to you for the rest of the program.