Cast your minds back to when you were a fresh faced runner with limited miles on the clock and let me know what you'd do in this situation...
I graduated from c25k a week or so ago. In a fit of family support I had already entered the Oxford 5 mile event this Sunday. People can walk, run and jog it. When I entered it was on the basis I'd be walking. I can now jog (for some of the way at least). I want to run for as much of the event as I can but without injuring myself.
So do I start jogging and just see how long I can go for, then walk till I recover and then jog the rest or.... do I do set intervals, say run for 10 mins then walk for 2?
Any thoughts gratefully received!
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Nictwit
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The rule of increasing by no more than 10% each week is a good one to avoid injury. If it were me I would do the first 5 minutes as the warm up walk, jog any part of the rest of the event, all in one go or as intervals, as long as in total it is no more than 33 minutes. I think it's totally permissable to be jogging over the finish line no matter what though.😉 However you do it, stay injury free and have fun! ☺
Hmmmm 🤔. The good thing is is that’s its not too far 🙂
You could be structured about it and say walk a minute for every km or two km.
Being as it’s not too far you could probably just get away with slow jogs and walk when you feel you need to, just to catch your breath, before setting off again. If you think you are struggling at any point then walk 🙂
Race day adrenaline carries you a bit of the way at the start and at the end. Beware of setting off too fast though as you can get stitch
The object of the exercise is to get round and have lots of fun. Get bling and cake and go home Uninjured 😃👍
You say you want to jog as much of the 8K as possible, and you ask what I would have done in your situation.
Now, the one thing that makes me lean towards suggesting run-walk intervals is that I don't know how far you can currently run - did you get close to 5K when you graduated? If you didn't, then the 5-miler starts to seem like quite a leap. Run-walk is a proven method for successfully completing races, and people can get very fast finishing times using it. Check out Jeff Galloway if you haven't already, but probably after your race on Sunday - no need to overthink things just now!
But to answer your question, in your shoes (so to speak) I would jog for as long as I could, and take walk breaks as needed!
With regards to injury prevention, I think that the best way to avoid hurting myself on a run is to include strength training in my weekly routine, and to ensure I warm up properly before running. As a relative novice, you are more at risk of injury, but if you keep a comfortable pace and monitor yourself carefully for signs of pain, then you should be fine.
Good luck! Would you like me to add you to our Events calendar? We'll give you a big cheer for Sunday!!
About 4.5k in 30 mins so it is going to be a leap. Think I'm leaning towards run walk intervals , more chance of running across the finishing line! I'll look up Jeff Galloway thank you.
No need to go in the event calendar for this one, I'll save that for when I know what I'm doing 😂
I agree with the others, and if I was in your shoes I would probably take the walk/ run interval approach so that you can run for some, enjoy it and prevent injury etc. Enjoy and have fun 😎
I like the idea of set run:walk for your circumstance. The problem with running as far as you can, recovering and then running again is you'll run to exhaustion and then will need a lot longer to recover. If you run a set interval, you'll stop before exhaustion and recover much quicker making the next interval easier and more enjoyable. The first few intervals you may question stopping but it will pay off in the latter part of the run. The interval choice is yourS. If you find you can run the 5k but it is a challenge still, you may want to consider a shorter run interval (4min run:1min walk) to hopefully cross the finish line with a big smile 😁. Best of luck and most importantly, enjoy your event
I'm becoming more of a run/walker at set intervals these days, so I agree with SaskAlliecat . Otherwise, I'd personally have tried to run it. I don't think you'll injure yourself on that distance.
That makes a lot of sense thank you. Set intervals even though I've got energy at the start to ensure I can get to the end. Now to go and buy some safety pins for my race number....😂
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