Return to C25K: a year on

[nickye89]

Hey all! I graduated C25K in August last year, after starting it in May (almost a year to the date). I’ve had a little break from running to focus more on my hockey (I’ve been playing for years, and hockey season generally takes up most of my time).

After completing the programme, I continued to push to be able to run 5km continuously. I have now done this several times but my best running pace is around 8:00/km. It’s now been a couple of months since I’ve run at all, so I’ve decided to go right back to the beginning of the C25K programme, and focus on making my running intervals faster. Has anyone else done this successfully? I’ve done W1R1 and W1R2 this week, and my running was at roughly 5:00/km. I obviously won’t be able to keep this up as the runs get longer and walks get shorter, but I’m interested to know if anyone has had improvement on their times by starting the programme again from the beginning?

[AlMorr Ambassador Graduate]

Like you nicke89 I graduated last year on June, completed and ran my quickest 5K in October, after that I did not do much running at all until April this year when I decided I would rerun some of the runs of C25K, the most interesting comparison was run 3 of week 5, last year my pace was 8.40 km, last Saturday when I reran that 20 minute run the pace was 7.09 which is a little faster.

My next comparison time will be when I get back to running for 30 minutes.

[Oldfloss Administrator Graduate]

Welcome... lots of us have done C25K again, or parts of it... sometimes after injury or life events etc... It works very well.

There is no pressure and you know you can do it...but...remember it the longer slower runs that build up distance and eventually speed. The long, slow runs build up stamina and strength... which we need to improve our pace!

So... work back up to the 30 minute runs... and then...time to re group, and begin to get in some really lovely relaxed longer runs...