Hello fellow runners! I haven’t posted here before but I have been an avid reader following everyone’s progress. Apologies for the long post, I ended up catching up with all my thoughts that I didn’t share as I progressed with the program 😅
I am writing to thank you all for the inspiration because I can proudly say that I have graduated today! Despite the fact that it started snowing again (seriously, what’s up with the weather in Europe...), I continued my way and finished my run!
For those who are just starting with the program and scrolling through the threads to get inspired and understand how this whole thing is supposed to work, maybe even being a bit skeptical - please know, it was me at the beginning. I never ran in my life, always hated it and had terrible memories of the torturous gym class running sessions. So looking back to having struggled to run for 60 seconds at the start that definitely brought back those “lovely” gym class memories and sensations, I definitely had some cynical thoughts that running is not for me and I will never be able to manage 5-10-30 minutes of continuous running. But so many people here wrote to just trust the program so I put my cynical thoughts away and followed the advice. And it worked! So yes, if you can’t imagine yourself running for any longer period of time now, soon you will find yourself surprised.
Also, repeat the runs if needed. I repeated one run in week 2 and one run in week 3 - yeah, the start was much tougher than the finish! I actually started on December 30 2020, so I also took much longer breaks in between the runs during the starting weeks, but starting week 4 I felt ready to stick to the schedule (although, week 4 was probably the toughest). Stick to it and you will be surprised!
Two, three, four and five kilometer runs that I completed throughout the course of the program were firsts in my life and I felt like I was breaking the invisible walls that I built putting myself into the mindset that I can’t run.
I can! And you can!!! Enjoy the journey!
About to start week 9 
Not ready for weeks 8 and 9?
Battle to beyond week 9
Disappointment at week 9
