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Running With It

By Q-Bert - Posted on 12 August 2011

Wednesday I unlocked this personal achievement by running 5.09 kilometers in 30 minutes. It's been a "fun filed" 10 weeks to get there.

Let me back-track a bit.

A few years ago, my uncle (the athletic trainer, and once-hopeful-olympian... Think Aku, but with humility) came to visit. During this visit, he decided that I needed exercise for some reason. So he made me follow him on an easy jog.

I lasted all of 2 minutes before needing to puke my guts out. And this was after he reduced his pace four times. From this, it was his professional opinion that my cardio-vascular capabilities was the equivalent of "a newborn little girl, who has been smoking 3 packs per day for the last 10 years.... you shit-head". I love my uncle.

Fast forward to this spring, and I read a tweet from a consultant in Seattle that I follow. Apparently, he wants to start this "C25K" program. Since I think this is a new programming language, I look it up. It's not. I've just been suckered into reading about how to train from sitting on your couch to running a 5 kilometer race. I've been on fad diets before, but never fad exercise regiments. I know Aku swears by the Shake Weight exercise , but I just can't get into those things. Still, I looked this one up. It looked promising, and it was spread over 9 weeks, so it looked realistic. Knowing myself, I figured I would have a chance in achieving it if I gave myself 30 or 50 weeks...

Of course, I can't do anything unless it involves some form of tech, so I looked up C25K on my iPhone apps, and lo-and-behold, there are apps for this program. I selected this one. It permits me to listen to songs while telling me when to walk and when to run. Being told what to do without having to think; perfect for married men.

The very first session involved repetitions of 1 minute of running and 3 minutes of walking. I barely made it. All sessions fit inside of 40 minutes, with 5 minutes of fast walking to warm up and 5 minutes of crawling on the ground at the end for cooling down. The program progresses you into longer running periods and reducing the number of walking periods. At the end, you are just running the full 30 minutes and you focus on your run pace. To be fair, the real runners that may be perusing this post may read that as "jogging" as my maximum pace has been 7 minutes per kilometer.

I ran my first 5K in 30 minutes last wednesday. Proud as hell.

God I hate running.

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Wow

Submitted by Akuf on August 12, 2011 - 11:01am.

let me be the first to congratulate you!!

Though all c25k is, is a variation of HIIT which I have been promoting for years. I even remember recommending it here a few times (I'm using my diePhone too lazy to look it up). Either way, it's awesome that you're doing it! Now IMHO you should incorporate metabolic resistance training like what I mentioned to you the other day. Like anything else start slow and with patience you work your way up there. You have just proved that to yourself and others (who shall remain nameless) on this site that well.. Should follow your example :p

As for the shakeweight comment. pfft nice try

Though the humility comment was a little offensive. I always love how people mistake confidence for arrogance. All that being said you obviously don't know me that well. Jerk....

All jokes aside though, I don't think I can run 5k mostly because of my infamous knees. Besides I would much rather be able to pick up a bus and throw it at someone rather than run. :)