I graduated at the end of November, I've participated in parkrun three times, but I've never actually managed to run 5K without having a walk break in there somewhere.... until today!
I was determined to get there ahead of doing another parkrun at the weekend (I won't get round that non-stop, not with a hill in the last half km), but one thing I'm finding is that although I can do the Stepping Stone quite comfortably, pushing on to Stamina is a bit much at the mo. So I prepared my own version of Stepping Stone, using some audio editing software to duplicate 5 minutes of the 150bpm section... and then off I trundled. And trundled. And trundled a bit further than normal... before picking up the pace a bit... and then it's getting to the 5 minute 160bpm section, I pull the phone out, last 30 seconds and I've got about 200m to go to do it.... Laura's saying well done, but I have to keep it going, just to be sure I eventually stop at 5.01km, in a shade under 35 minutes, and break out into a big grin! At long last, in fact 10 months after I started C25K properly, I have run 5K!
Now back to Erddig on Saturday to see about cracking 38 minutes.... I'll take the custom podcast with me, but if Laura thinks I'm going to get up that hill at 160bpm she's got another thing coming......