After almost 3 years: W8

[Sunnyrunning]

Hello!I hope you're all having a nice time! I've started the program in September 2020 and managed my way up to week 3 or the beginning of 4 I believe. I terribly ran out of breath so I've repeated runs, then stopped for months before starting all over again. Working my way up to week 4, eventually 5. Stopped several times. Repeated runs several times. Could not imagine to ever be able to run 25 minutes in one go.

This spring I started again with week 4. My fitness has improved enough to do it easily and something just clicked. I stopped being too strict on what days I run. Sometimes, technically I didn't do my three runs in one week. Sometimes it takes me a week and a half. But it works so well that now I'm on week 8 and the 25 minutes running are just fun! I run faster than I ever have in my whole life and I learned to just slow down and breathe the moments I feel like stopping. Now I know I don't have to stop. I can take it easy and pick up the pace again after 5 minutes or so. I can't wait to finish the program this year.

And I must say, reading posts in this forum has really motivated me too. Feeling like part of this community feels good. That's why I decided it was time to share my journey too.

I'm planning to reward myself with a park run, once I graduated (in about two weeks). Before, I felt too shy and embarrassed, but now I think I'd enjoy it, being less worried about getting out of breath.

I'd also like to keep on running during autumn, which is usually the time I slowly stop. So I will stick around the forum to see what people say

Happy running!

[Annieapple Administrator Graduate]

👏 Welcome 🤗 to the forum and so well done for keeping on until it suddenly all came right!! What an example in perseverance…. If you can do this you can certainly keep running through the autumn and winter too! Keep posting and we will encourage you through to the Spring. At the same time we can learn a thing or two from you!! 🍏

[Sunnyrunning in reply to Annieapple]

Aaaww! Thank you! I appreciate your kind words. Funny how I never thought of it as perseverance. I just thought I kept on giving up. But of course, I also kept on trying again thanks for that powerful change in thinking!

[AlMorr Ambassador Graduate]

Good post from you Sunnyrunning, I am so glad that you are now enjoying your running and have only a few more runs until you graduate from C25K, once you do graduate run 6/30 minute consolidation runs over two weeks and continue running well into the Autumn and beyond, if you do stop running as before you will need to restart C25K again next year, good luck for your graduation run next week.

[Sunnyrunning in reply to AlMorr]

I appreciate your advice, thank you! I wouldn't have quite known what to do once the program is done. Better to have a plan now on how to continue than to finish it and stop altogether.I feel lucky I found this forum

[AlMorr Ambassador Graduate in reply to Sunnyrunning]

👍 🏃🏾