Saturday, October 30, 2010

I Completed Couch to 5K

Well, I did it.

On Friday, I went out and did my third run of week 9, thus finishing my final week of Couch to 5K. I was surprisingly nervous about the run, even though I absolutely knew I could do it. I'd done an extra run last Saturday and went for 34 minutes, plus I'd completed the 30-minute runs on Monday and Wednesday.

I guess I was worried something bad would happen and I wouldn't graduate.

But I did. I finished my 30-minute run and all was just fine.

Of course the truth is that I'm not sure I've really graduated the program since I'm not really anywhere near running 5K at this point. This morning, I went for an extra run, and I covered 1.95 miles in 34 minutes. That's a blinding average speed of 17:38 minutes per mile. (Can you hear the sarcasm?)

On Monday, I will start the 10-week Ease into 10K program. Although I could have jumped right into the 6-week Bridge to 10K program, I figured that going with the longer program will give me a few more weeks of short intervals so I can work on increasing my speed.

At this point, I have three goals I would like to achieve:
  1. Complete Ease into 10K and be able to run for a full 60 minutes without stopping. Unless I get sick, injured or have to repeat a week, I expect to meet this goal on January 17.
  2. Be able to run 5 miles without stopping. Given that I can't even cover two miles within 30 minutes, I have a feeling this goal will take much longer to achieve.
  3. Be able to run a 10-minute mile. At this point, this goal seems really far off, but it's on my radar. Right now, I can't predict when I might be able to do this, but maybe I'll have a better idea in January.

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