Woohoo! 20 minutes running.  OK, 20 minutes very very slow running but still.  How much do I rock?  How much do we all rock?

Geowolf, it's tough when you don't get the support in real life, but just keep on doing what you're doing, you'll get there.  We're all here for you.

Mcmeggar, I always sort of resent it as well when I have to give myself extra rest days, and I know what you mean about giving yourself permission to repeat weeks, but I've found the extra days don't hurt the program too much.

Camaro - dads rock too!

And everyone I've missed - you're all fantastic.  Keep with it, we can do this.

Good morning everyone!  Completed W6D2 this morning.  It was supposed to be the 10R, 3W, 10R but I was feeling pretty good and went 20R 3W 5R instead.  Might've helped that it was a beautiful 68F at 5:20am this morning.  I even saw a number of other people out walking, so they must've agreed!  Looking forward to W6D3 too, surprisingly.  Keep it up everyone, we are doing great!

I haven't posted much to the forum even though I started on June 1st.  I did great until Week 4 Day 1 and I felt as if I had hit a wall.  I couldn't complete the last 5 minute run and got discouraged.  I felt the program was too "hard" for me and switched to another, easier program.  After a few weeks I realized I wasn't making any progress at all because I wasn't challenging myself.  So I'm back and committed to repeating Week 4 as many times as needed to get past it.  This morning I was able to do 4 minutes on the last run, but it was killing me!  But I did it!!  And I had to remind myself that out of my 32 minute workout, I was running for 15 minutes - slowly, but I was running.  I also have to remind myself that I am 62 years old and a lifelong couch potato.  When I first started, it was a struggle to run for 1 minute at a time.  I'm so grateful for this community.  Even when I took time off, I was reading every post, every day.  You are all my heroes!

Medbill:  Great work!  Sometimes I wish I wasn’t clocking distance.  I always seem to have in the back of my mind how short I’m falling on that. I think it’s a great idea not to look at that until at least toward the end.

Interesting how many different apps there are.  I like the way yours progresses toward the end.  So far C25K is seems to be the only one that seems to have to fast a push at week 5.

Mcmegger:  You are doing great.  It’s so tempting to skip those days isn’t it?  I had the same thing you did with extra rest days and really wanting to catch up with where I was supposed to be. So, I thought about doing it too, but I decided not to.  Glad I didn’t.  I really wanted to be done with C25K by the time I go to Florida to visit family and right now (assuming we go) it’s going to be really close if I don’t have to repeat days.  If I do I’ll be finishing down there.  (of course that is going for time, I won’t make the distance by then.) Did you check your pace and slow way down once you started to feel tired.  You can run through some things (like tired legs or light muscle cramps) but true pain is a warning. My best advice is if you start feeling that walk and then if it works out try jogging again.  My 1^st C25k attempt I did all kinds of crazy things to try and get the jogs in.  If I had to walk 5 minutes instead of 3 to be ready I’d just add the time to the end.  (If I had to do it on day 1, I didn’t sweat it.  If it was day 3 then there was going to be a day 4 or 5 or…  LOL)  But there were a few days that I had to just say OK it’s a bust, let’s hope tomorrow is better.  One day I remember just giving up on day 1 or 2 and going home less then ½ way thru. I thought this week is going to take forever.  Then I nailed the next 2 days. Go figure.  J 

TisforTiara:  You major rock!  Great job.  Must feel great to have that one behind you. 

MB it’s amazing to me how quickly your plan jumps you up after seeming slow thru some of the middle weeks.  Looking at the other plans that people in this thread are doing I’m thinking that I’m going to do the jogs from here on out to suit me. If I feel like I can add a little or cut a walk short I’m going to do it.  Once I’ve caught my breath I feel like the walks are just giving me leg cramps.  The 1^st jog I will likely do as planned and then for the others I’ll see how I feel. I just don’t want to get to wrapped up in “this is the only way to meet my goal.”  Frankly on W5D3 I’d be just as happy if I ended up doing a longer total with a short walk in the middle as I would doing the 20 minutes.  But that’s because 20 minutes at that point scares me and I couldn’t do it the 1^st 2 times.  LOL  I also love the way your plan jumps up, but I don’t want to push myself too much.  If it turns out I’m in the phase and I can run a little further great, if not no sweat.  Well OK lots of sweat, but not that kind.

Camaro:  Awesome!  And I am so jealous, 68 sounds like heaven.

Sassy: Thank you.  As a matter of fact thank you everyone.  I was going to wait for my update to say that, but I didn’t want to skip giving you a heads up.

MissouriStar: Glad to see you joining in.  I find it’s most helpful to me to remember where I was instead of focusing on where I am.  Like you said when you put it in context of how many minutes total you are running now well it feels a whole lot better than what you aren’t doing.  I’m really slow so it’s hard for me to slow down even more, but sometimes I have to so I can finish a jog.  If you run to fast trying to make the distance (or closer to it) you will hit those walls a lot harder.  I hate to admit that I’m older and not as healthy as I’d like to be, so I have ration myself.  There have been times that I’ve jogged so slowly that I’m sure I could have walked faster, but if that’s what it takes I do it.  So my best advice would be to slow down however much you need to, to meet the time. I am not ruling out repeating C25K again to increase my speed.  Only this time the walks would be slow jogs and the runs would be faster ones.  Or I might just accept that I’m slow and go with it. But for now when I feel myself getting tired I remind myself to slow down and to breath.  Loosen my hands (clenched fists tire you out.) and pick a point up ahead that I can make it to before I quit.  Maybe some of this can help you.  You can do it!  The wall will move eventually.  If you are stuck at 4 minutes and 5 seems to hard just go for 4 ½ or even 4 ¼.  We are here for you.

Now for my update:  Man I was slow tonight.  Ok so in my defense there were a bunch of frogs in the road and I kept slowing down to chase them to safety. (at least a dozen) My husband ran one over last week and I couldn’t bear to see that kind of carnage again.  I know sort of silly.  I also passed 3 large dogs (2 were Dobermans, I think) that I’ve never seen before and they had me worried.  I think I slowed a bit there.  Then I decided that I didn’t want to go back past them so I decided to see where the road took me and kept going straight.  Well it took me to nowhere to run off the pavement (I have some short distances I can usually do that) and a couple of long gradual hills. I was losing time on those, but in all fairness there was more downhill than up and I’d guess the time I gained on that evened it out pretty well.  I really enjoyed myself tonight.  So who cares of my time wasn’t great and my distance was one of the shortest I’ve had so far.  I actually don’t know what it was because I hit a button again and ended the app when I was supposed to be starting my cool down. But I’d guess since that was up hill and I was dragging by then that I’d be giving myself some extra if I added even .20 miles.  Distance on the app was 1.62 miles with a 16:43 pace. But I’m so thrilled to be heading into week 5. 

Hi Sunni,

You can do it - just slow your pace down to where you feel comfortable. Also, repeating a day isn't a bad thing...it's all about what you can do!

I'm using the 5K Runner app on my iPhone and find it a much more gradual change. My W5D2 is 5R, 3W, 8R, 5W, 5R - with the warm up and cool down 5 min. That may work better for you - I'm having a lot of success and feel like I'm making progress each time I run. I don't hit the 20 min. run until W7. Of course, I'll have major catching up to do in W8, but I figure I'll be stronger and more comfortable with running by then.

Good luck!   I'll be running Day 2 with you tomorrow - you can do it!

Anne

Hi Sunni, Welcome to the board. After reading what the apps some of the others are using have in store for week 5 I'm a lot less stressed. If I feel like 20 minutes is too much for me I'm prepared to be OK with some short walks and adding running minutes at the end so my total running time is at least 20 m. Of course it would be awesome if I get out there and finish it but since C25K is the only plan I've seen that expects that so soon I'm not going to let it intimidate me or be the gauge by which I measure success or failure for that day. I ended up adding some extra days 3 times last week and I hated that. Hoping to stay on track for the most part from now on. Good luck and keep posting.

Awesome picture!

Can't believe it but I finished my jog before sunset. So interesting running in daylight. Flowers, butterflies, birds. No suicidal frogs…  It was very nice out only 75, although the 98% humidity was a bit tough.  Streams of water running along the sides of the road to remind me of why it was so cool.  No flooding thankfully.  Pretty sure there is some about a ¼ mile the other direction though.  I had to stay on the road because the ground was too mushy in my few off the road spots.  Took the straight road and the slight hills again.  Still slow as anything, I know that because a turtle passed me.  OK so maybe not, but I could so see that happening.  When it came time to cool down I was on a downhill run and I just couldn’t stop.  It felt so good and I wasn’t feeling super winded, so I thought I’ll toss in an extra minute and make day 2’s run less intimidating.  When I checked my time to see if I’d made it to a 4 minute cool down yet I was amazed to see 6 seconds left to 3 minutes.  I jogged them off and walked an extra 2 to make up for it.  I didn’t back the timer so I can’t say what my total distance was but official was 1.78 miles. 

I don't have time to catch up I have to shower and go get some dinner.   We all rock! 

Where is everyone?  I missed my run last night but I'm hoping to go at dawn since I'm not sleeping.  Mostly because I missed my run.  LOL  OK so it's really mostly because my son kicked me in the chest and I hurt so much I went to sleep.  Then when I woke up I was having one of my spells and its not safe to run when I'm having one.  When I have them everything looks a little odd and the world seems sort of dreamlike.  I have had them get bad enough that the the world keeps fading and I pass out.  So no running during one.  I'm feeling better now and since I had stupid 4 hour nap (woke up at midnight) and I can't sleep i'm considering a dawn jog.  I think it would be nice, if I'm not feeling too tired. 

Edited to add:

I feeeeel GOOD!  Like I knew I would...  LOL   OK so I was about .10 or .15 miles from home and the 2 mile mark when the time ran out, so I fixed my data to reflect my actual distance.  I actually added 2 extra minutes to my 2nd jog so that it was 10 minutes instead of just 8.  (only walked 4 minutes in the middle instead of 5 because I felt ready to run.) My pace not including the couple of extra minutes I needed to get home was 16:45 mm.  Still doing really slow walks.  I've never considered myself a slow walker so I don't understand why my pace is so slow with this.  I think part of it is I warm up slow and then my legs are tired when I need to walk after that.  Plus still dealing some with cramps on the walks.  Not even close to as bad as they were, but annoying.  

Looking forward to lots of updates!  I'm not sure what to do about my next jog.  Since I did this one in the morning it really threw my times off.  Not likly to be up this early everyday.  Although it would be nice.  sigh.  So now my delima is do I try week 5 day 3 about 8 hours early and go at midnight Tuesday night or hope for a cool day on Wed so I can go early and not have to feel like I'm loosing another day. (There is a 60% chance of rain both days and highs are only forcast for 89 right now.)  I don't think I'd worry about going a little early if the next jog wasn't supposed to be the 20 minute one.  Even though I'm taking an it's not a failing if I modify it some and don't make 20 minutes without a short walk.  I really want to give it my best shot.