A month and a bit ago I wrote about having completed week 5 run 3 , which felt great. Then I sprained my knee and only started back running last week deciding to drop back a week on the plan to week 4. As this felt ok, I carried on with week 5 and faced the monster again this morning that is wk5r3. Weirdly I was much more worried this time partly because I didn't want to be 'worse' than last time and partly because I am aware that I had a month off running (and exercise) and am still recovering from injury...
Today's jog was slow and the first 5 minutes were hard, I thought I was never going to do it. My legs were heavy, my knee was sore and I knew I couldn't do it but I thought I'd give it a bit longer. Next thing you know things are getting easier and there's that weird 'aka Dracula' bit in that anti-feminist song then Laura says 10 minutes. 'Ok that's an achievement so I will keep going a little further'. Running wise I feel fresh, much fresher than in the first 5 minutes. Then I hear the magic, 'you have 5 minutes to go' and I know I have enough left in me to pick up the pace so I do. Then, the magic 2 minutes and I go even faster when she said I could walk, I carried on with a final sprint to the nearest lampost.
To put this in context, I have never been a fast runner and since injury I have taken it extra slow to make sure runs are achievable so my quicker pace is probably everyone else's average or slow Map my run said my pace was 8 min a km.
Having caught up to where I was in the plan, it is finally time to tackle week 6 properly with two working legs which feels like progress at last. I will miss my planned May 5k in favour of one in early June instead but all being well I feel I will get there, even if my current pace means it will take me 40 minutes to get around