Hi,
Warning: I’m a waffler!
4th time lucky - I completed my graduation run yesterday afternoon after 4 previous attempts at c25k. I’d only ever made it as far as week 6 before and always been derailed by life getting in the way. My last attempt was going well and then I fell pregnant and was way too sick and tired to run!
During lockdown, I turned 40 and my ‘baby’ turned 2. I’m still carrying 2 stone of extra weight from my pregnancy and one May afternoon I just decided that it was time to start changing habits for life - for the sake of my health and to set a good example to my little girl, so off I went for week 1, run 1. It’s taken me 10 and a half weeks to get here, as life is especially busy these days but I’ve started to make sure I prioritise my runs and hope I can continue to do so.
I haven’t yet commented here but discovered this forum around week 3, when I went looking for advice about a few knee niggles. Since then, I’ve been lurking on here every day and have found this forum so incredibly useful, informative, supportive and motivational! Thank you to all who post here and share their experiences - it really does help so much, so I thought it only fair that I take my turn to share too.
So here’s a summary of my experience:
I found weeks 1-5 really exciting and was highly motivated. I’d done the dreaded w5r3 before, so knew that it was hard but do-able and I sailed through it this time and even enjoyed it. Week 6 started to feel a little harder but still achievable. Then came week 7 and 8... the first 2 runs of week 7 were so hard. It just felt like an endless slog. “Shouldn’t I be enjoying it more by now? Finding it a little easier?” I thought. Advice from the forums kept saying to SLOW DOWN. So I did, and found wk7r3 a little easier. It got tough again in week 8 and it was really only my stubbornness that got me through I think! I tried changing my route for w8r2 but that was a mistake - Top tip: don’t run past takeaway shops! I was almost derailed by the chip shop at the 20 minute mark but I persisted to the end. W8r3 was the first run I had to repeat, which was frustrating, but then I started to try to change my mindset around this time. I switched from listening to music, to listening to an audiobook. Instead of being desperate to get the next run ticked off and race to the graduation run, I just decided to think of myself as someone who runs regularly, so every time I went out, I told myself, “No big deal, I’m just going for a 30 minute run because that’s what I do now”. I looked forward to 30 minutes of listening to a book and being outside, rather than being nervous about completing or not completing the next run in the programme. This really helped me I think.
Graduation run crept up on me stealthily. I didn’t actually want to go for a run yesterday. I was tired, achey, I’d had 3 days off and I just felt a bit flat. Rather than overthink it, I just quickly got my clothes on and got out the door. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really enjoying it until about 20 minutes in and then I found my groove, realised that I could easily finish and ten minutes later, it was all over and I felt fantastic!
I’m looking forward to consolidating my new running habit and have my sights set on extending my 4.2k pb to a 5K at some point - I’ve a vision of my daughter cheering me over the finish line of a park run (when they start again) and being inspired to just make exercise a normal part of her week as she grows up.
Thanks again to everyone who has posted here and shared their experiences. I’m off to the forums to find advice about consolidation now.
Good luck to anyone still working through the programme - you can do it and remember the golden advice: Slow down!! 😄
I did it!
Week9R3! Completed....at last. 
Week 5 ✅ 20 mins!!!
Week 6 run 3
Third time lucky?
