Stepping Stones - why you should never give up dancing!

[parkbirdy]

Tried the first of the 5k+ podcasts this am - picked stepping stones as speed sounded just that bit too scary. And realised the cross training I need to do for this is dancing - I just don't do enough of it anymore , apart from in my kitchen. So the challenge of locking onto that beat - wow I felt like I was suddenly being asked to do a fred astaire and run at the same time! 1 2 3 4 1 2 oops where's it gone 7 er 3 er 1234

Has anyone else found it this tricky?

I only managed it by taking baby steps - so by my milestones of lamposts, street corners, park benches I knew I was going a bit more slowly than usual in the first bit. Next time I'll try to be braver and take slightly longer strides. At least I had something in the tank for that last five minutes and gave it some welly. But when i mapped it the final run was shorter than my last week 9 run!

It's going to be a push to get faster

[Mitts Graduate]

Try Stamina - it's a wee bit faster but I found it easier for the very reasons you've given here. I'm not sure longer strides are the answer, I can't remember exactly but isn't overstriding damaging to something? If Stepping Stones is slower than your natural pace you might like Stamina better.

[thinnerandfitter Graduate]

Mitts is right - personally I found Speed easier to start with - it does have 150 bpm intervals but they are very short and the main run at the beginning is faster, which suits my legs better I've done Stamina a couple of times but never quite finished (the first time was with my 50th birthday hangover, and the second I finally hit 5k at 34 mins and stopped there).

However, I still use Stepping Stones too and find that quite OK now - although it was s-l-o-w the first time I've found it great for my comeback runs (3 weeks off with cough).

Next Stamina attempt is Sunday - I'm hoping the snow on the forecast this morning doesn't materialise!

Keep on running and let us know how it goes!

Ann x

[pingle Graduate]

I found it tricky to lock on to the beat at first too - doesn't help that Laura sometimes counts just a tiny bit off! Try Speed - it's quite short and I found it fun to return to intervals even though the faster bits were tough at first. Now I like it so much that I sometimes tack it on to the end of a longer run just for fun. Can't believe I just typed that - who'd have thought a year ago that I'd be running just for fun!