Hi! I’m Mike, I’m 75 and I’m a newbie here. But I’m not new to C25k. I have an incurable (but treatable) blood cancer that has twice brought me to the point where I could barely walk from the hospital car park to the consultant’s office. The first time around, I started C25k as soon as my 6 months of chemotherapy were over. It took me 12 weeks to complete the programme, but I went on to take up regular Parkruns, and gradually got my 5k time down to under 37 minutes.
I committed myself to doing a sponsored 10k run, but in the meantime the cancer reasserted itself and I found I was unable to run more than 2 or 3 km without walking. I eventually gave up the Parkruns and became gradually less fit while I waited for the next round of treatment.
This is where I got lucky, because a new drug was approved that does not require chemotherapy. Within a few days of starting the treatment I began to feel better and very quickly I became frustrated by my poor fitness. So I started again on C25k, just 3 weeks after my low point. On my first run I had barely enough muscle strength to manage to jog, my ankles felt weak and unstable and I struggled to complete the session even at the slowest possible jogging speed. But C25k worked its magic. I got through the week and have kept to schedule (apart from an enforced 1-week layoff due to a side-effect of my treatment), so yesterday I comfortably completed Week 6.
Where do I want to go from here? I have a series of 4 targets. The first is obviously W9r3, to be followed soon after by a non-stop Parkrun. Then I want to do a new Parkrun PB (I should be able to because my cancer limited me last time, and I don’t see why being a couple of years older should be allowed to hold me back!) and finally I want to do that 10k without stopping. After that, who knows….?
Can I offer encouragement to any self-doubting newbie who has read this far? Yes – if you can do Week 1 run 1, no matter how slowly or how many attempts it might take you, you can complete the course. My experience (now twice!) is that it gets easier with every passing week, and the sense of achievement at the end will make it all worthwhile.