Ran for longer than 25 minutes on week 7, what now?

[markhurn]

Did my second run of week 7 today, usually run after work but as I was rained off decided to get it over with earlier!

Already ran for 25 minutes twice (W6R3 & W7R1) and as I do the same route I know roughly where my warm up walk ends and my run starts and what point 25 minutes will get me. Therefore I didn't listen to Laura but had my own playlist on. Found it easier than the last run and when nearing the end (25 minutes) decided to carry on a bit further, ended up getting all the way home (5.06km) in about 33 mins 30 secs. I am extremely chuffed, I'm 41, only 5'8" and a shade under 15 stone so a fair bit overweight and not really exercised properly since school so seven weeks ago, after puffing like a train after the 60 second runs, and with all the aches and pains that came in the first ferw weeks I never dreamt I would be able to run for that time/distance.

My question is, now I have run 5k should I continue to run that sort of distance and ignore the rest of the plan or just treat it as a good day, one off, and continue with the rest of week 7, 8 and 9?

Many thanks

Mark.

[mrqwest Graduate]

Well done for the 5k in 33 minutes, it's a great feeling isn't it!

I'm in pretty much the same predicament but ran 5k on W8R1 so a couple of runs behind you but the last two runs have seen me do 5k. I'm not bored by the route and ideally would want to improve on my time so far and beat my personal bests (would love a sub-30min 5k run) but game plan is to beat the 30-min 5k (PB is 32:49) and them aim for 10k.

I have made sure I've been exceeding the times on the plan though (more to get a graduate badge than anything else ha!) but for the last 3 runs, I've been using my own music instead of the podcasts.

[morandanny Graduate]

At this point in the program, you are only just increasing the time running each week. W7 is 25 minutes, W8 is 28 minutes and W9 is 30 minutes.

So if you can consistently run for 30 minutes, then that is the point of the program.

The question now is how you recover, if you are unable to run at least 25 minutes after the rest day, then you may have pushed too hard on this day.

[TJFlute]

It is really important to increase the time of each run slowly to avoid injury. Personally I would treat it as a 'one off' and run 28 mins x3 and then 30 mins x3 (ie week 8 and 9) before you run over the 30 minutes again.

[Hidden]

I was asking myself the exact same thing after I ran for 32 minutes instead of the 25 of W7/r3.

And the next run of W8/R1? I managed about 17 minutes. I'll stick to the program, do 28 minutes 3x and then the 30 3x and THEN I'll see where to go from there.

As TJFlute said, I'll treat it as a one-off and not try to fun 30 minutes or more only because everything went smoothly and I did it once.

[markhurn Graduate]

thanks for all the advice, I suppose that's what I thought, just got a bit carried away that I ran for so long!. Great plan though, didn't expect it to be this successful!!

[Gazter Graduate]

yeah the only time i have ended up with really sore knees was when i overdid the running, i went from 25 minutes to 33 minutes, it put me out for a week.