Repeating part of C25K to regain form after injury

[BargainRzl]

I graduated C25K at the end of October. After three weeks of maintenance running, I broke my toe in a non-sporting accident and was unable to run again until a couple of weeks ago.

I did my local parkrun on Saturday to test my form, and found that I had to slow down to a brisk walk after about 10 minutes, and then had difficulty maintaining a run for more than a couple of minutes for the rest of the course. Nothing wrong with my toe, just a loss of stamina and form (and possibly, lung capacity).

So I’m thinking of retracing my steps and doing part of Couch to 5K again to build myself back up - it’s a lot less daunting having already done it once! But I’m pretty sure I don’t need to go right back to week 1, and I’m wondering what would be an appropriate level to go back to. I’m thinking maybe week 3 or 4.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s been through similar!

[IannodaTruffe Mentor]

How long did you run for before you started walking at parkrun?

That should tell you what duration you can handle and so you can gauge which week of C25K best matches this duration.

[ButtercupKid Graduate in reply to IannodaTruffe]

You are just astonishingly sensible, IT. Why didn’t I think of that ? 😄

[BargainRzl Graduate in reply to IannodaTruffe]

Thanks. As I said in my OP, it wasn’t just the initial time I was able to sustain running for (10mins) but also the fact that I clearly had overdone it at that stage to the point that I couldn’t then get a sustained run going again.

Looking back at the C25K durations I think W3 is probably too easy, W5 too hard (I could probably manage run 1 or 2 but can’t imagine being up to run 3 after just a couple of runs) so W4 is probably a sensible point to return to.

[BargainRzl Graduate in reply to BargainRzl]

Also, if I do a W4 run and find it easy, there would be nothing stopping me ditching the other two W4 runs and just going on to W5.

[BargainRzl Graduate in reply to IannodaTruffe]

Did a W4 run this morning and reckon I’ll stick with that this week and then move on from there