About this Blog

I started this blog as a record of my journey in learning how to run. I hope my experience can help you too in your mission to get off the couch, start exercising and lose that extra layer.

My posts are honest and personal. I have divided them into three sections that comment on my emotions, the physical run (jog!) and tips for next time to help me improve my performance. I hope you can use these ideas to encourage and help you along in your couch to 5k journey.

Please share your experiences, ideas or questions in the comment section of each post.

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Saturday 7 January 2012

Week 7, Day 3

(Saturday 7:00am)

Emotions (before):
I am away from home and staying at the place I grew up in. Although I lived there for 20 years, I had never ever jogged around it! It is a picturesque area with parkland, river, nature trails and foot bridges hugging the water. 

I was looking forward to going running along a different route to the previous sessions. Unfortunately, I was not in a happy frame of mind when I left and this affected the success of this session.

The run:
Oh what an awful run. I did three naughty little walks today! I have realised I am going too fast in the first 10 minutes and therefore the final 15 are a struggle. I really need to work on jogging at a consistent pace right from the start. The first 1.6kms was completed in 9 minutes with an average pace of 5:37mins/km. However, the next 16 minutes was at an average pace of just over 7mins/km!

I accidentally left my headband at home so my headphones kept on falling out and this, in addition to my sour mood, contributed to the struggle to get my feet off the ground.

I need to learn to use this time as a personal break or escape, rather than carrying thoughts on my shoulders as I run.

At the 15 minute mark, I decided that was it for jogging and I was going to walk the rest of the way home. I paused my GPS and got ready to discard the session. Then I saw on the map that I had covered 2.7kms. I thought, 'I want to get one more kilometre done.' So after a bit of a walk I got my legs going again and jogged the rest of the way home (with one more walk in between!).

To my amazement (and confusion), I covered 3.91kms in this 25 minute run/jog/walk/hobble/jog at an average pace of 6:29mins/km.

Since then, my mood has improved and although I didn't consistently jog the whole 25 minutes, I guess the effort wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I got myself back into a jog when I had pretty much given up on the session.

Tips for next run:
  • Use the sessions as a time that is only about you and your body. Leave any negative thoughts behind and make this time a personal escape from the world.

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