Hi, just starting week 5 (looks challenging) all on a treadmill due to domestic circumstances but really enjoying it so far. Surprised at how stamina increases so quickly as I’ve never been able to run. Managing 8k/h running speed. Hopefully will improve as the weeks go on. My eventual target is to be able to run 10k in around an 70 minutes by 2023.
Great to join a friendly and supportive forum. 👍
Welcome! I felt exactly the same going in to week 5 (I had a policy of not looking at future weeks before starting them) but it was surprisingly ok. Don’t forget you’ve already got all the training from weeks 1-4 in your legs and you know how to slow down if you need to, or just want to! I’m pretty sure I did at least one of those runs outside in a storm so the treadmill definitely has a big advantage there.
The big bonus with a twenty minute run is it takes you through the “toxic ten minutes” at the start of a run when lots of us find it hard (or utterly horrific if you’re me!). Once that’s done, you can often settle into a really nice brain-switched-off rhythm that you can just keep at for as long as you need to. I find music really helps me to keep me going.
Good luck for this week.
Welcome and aren’t you doing well? Slow it down a bit for the longer runs and you will be surprised to run an easy week 5 run 3 😀
Well done! That's brilliant. Just a tiny word of caution though - it's great to have targets, but keep it slow and steady through the programme - there's plenty of time when you graduate to have targets, but many of us have put a bit too much pressure on ourselves and we can get injured or discouraged. Take care!
Welcome to the forum and well done on your progress.
Forget about pace for the time being. C25k is a duration based plan and counterintuitively, it is easy conversational pace running that builds your stamina and endurance, not fast running.
Say this sentence out loud to yourself "Am I going slow enough to enable me to speak this sentence in one out breath?" If you cannot, you are going too fast.
This guide to the plan is essential reading healthunlocked.com/couchto5....
and includes advice on minimising impact, stretching after every run, hydration and strengthening exercises, all of which will help.
Enjoy your journey.
Hi, thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.
Well done on your progress Silverslowcoach1961 . Just one thing though - don't expect your pace to increase as you go through the programme. It's not about speed, it's about run duration. Happy running!
Fabulous and well done!
Just make sure you are patient with your new running legs. Your stamina and aerobic fitness improves faster than your ligaments and bones and tendons. So patience is a good skill to have in the first year of a running journey!
And if you want to add some strength and mobility exercises to the mix, feel free to hop over to our sister forum Strength and Flex at healthunlocked.com/strength...
Keep on keeping on!
Thanks for the advice and link to the strength and flex forum. I’ll have a look at it. Cheers
8km/hour (speed) is 7:30/km (pace).
That would have been a good comfortable slow pace for me during the later weeks of Couch to 5K.
My mistake was to increase my pace towards the end of the programme, getting to 10km/hour (6 min/km) to achieve 5km in my graduation run, and ignoring the tiny niggly feeling in my ankles. That gained me a doubly sprained ankle, a month with no running, two physio visits and having to restart C25K from scratch.
The target of Couch to 5K is not to get to 5km. It's to do three 30 minute runs.
After my second graduation (November 2020), my pace tended to be around the 7 min/km mark. 18 months on and over a thousand miles run, my natural pace on the flat is about 5:30/km (11km/hour). I don't do speed work. This has all come from putting in miles and miles of slow runs.
If you take it easy and don't push the pace but instead go for gradually increasing distance and duration, it's entirely possible you could be doing 10km in an hour by this time next year.
Your first two months of running is when the muscles develop. Your next four months is when the rest of your body develops to support those stronger muscles.
Thanks for the advice, much appreciated.
I know that nowster is advising caution on speeding up, but I'd also advise against not looking at his speeds. I think on a treadmill it would be more difficult to not get caught up in what speed to set it at (whereas outdoors you can more easily make micro-adjustments to speed). At graduating I was taking more than 7:30 min/km, and even a year on I'm only at an average of 7:00/km, more or less. I'll never reach the speeds that nowster does, and nor do many of the people on this forum. Of course, many others do, but don't feel like you should be achieving anything - completing is achievement enough for now, and as nowster says, staying injury free is the most important thing of all.
So true, I only run at the same pace as a fast walk right now!
True. I have never ever run on a treadmill. I run to feel and not to a set pace.
On the other hand, if Silverslowcoach1961 is comfortably doing 7:30/km at the moment, it bodes well for his general fitness.
The benchmark is, as always, whether you could hold a conversation whilst running. If you can't, you're going too hard and need to slow down.
I'm sure you're right. It's just that I found myself slowing down if anything through c25k as the run intervals got longer and the walking was eventually phased out, as the recovery time was gone.
Hi, I am also running on a treadmill and am now on W6. W5 was actually OK despite some of the other posts I had previously read. I just stayed nice and slow and thought lets see what happens - and did it, as I'm sure you will too. Good luck!
First run post Graduation.
First run post graduation. 
First post-grad run/first parkrun
First post grad run 😃
Completed Week5 - First Post
