I finished week 1 of B210K this morning.  I had a great run!  I ended up going further than I had gone earlier in the week.  I'm still amazed at myself and that I can get up the motivation to get out there and do this thing.  I'm also surprised how the 1 minute walks in the middle made it so much easier to run further.  It doesn't seem like that long while it's happening, but it definitely gives me something to look forward to, as well as a break to get my breathing under control if it's not.

From when I moved into my condo 4 years ago, I've wanted to be able to exercise in a certain neighborhood by me, because it seems so friendly and fun.  The problem is that it's two miles away from my house, and I've never been able to get to the neighborhood, let alone walk around when I get there.  Of course, I could drive there, but I don't want to seem like a creepo.  I've ridden by bike there, but I feel like biking is so much less personal when you see someone on the street.  Today, I reached the neighborhood and made it a block before I turned around to get back to my house!!  It was cool to actually do something that I didn't think was possible before.  Hopefully as my time/distance increases, I'll be able to make it through the whole neighborhood.

I'm not seeing too much action on the thread, hopefully you guys are still out there running!  It'll be tough carrying on if I don't have my mini-motivators sitting on my shoulders telling me to keep going!

Hi Everyone,

I graduated c25k May 2010. Right now I have several races scheduled and my 1st marathon is in September. Right now Im up to 25-30 miles a week. Im still trying to break my long run of 13 miles. Im using the Running World Smart Coach program I have a 14 mile run scheduled for next week that will be the furthest run I have attempted.  Right now I cant imagine getting through a marathon but last year I thought 3 miles was tough. Now I do 3 miles in my sleep.:)

Anyway congratulations to all the grads out there and Happy Running!!!

I love The Smart Coach. Its similar to the other programs I looked at but with Smart Coach you can customize the program.   Plug in your last race time, how many weeks and miles/week your training for, and intensity level the program gives you a training schedule. Play with Smart Coach its free so got nothing to lose. If you compare it to Hidgons programs its pretty much similar.

I'm still here and running 32 minutes pretty comforably now.  I think I'm over the strain i put on my tendons earlier this month.  I'm working on getting up to 40 minutes consistently which  is about 3.5 miles for me. I have my second 5k coming up in the beginning of June and then another one at the end of June.  I'm going to stick with the 5k training schedule for this summer and then move on to the 10k in the fall.  But even though this feels like the right place for me in terms of my body, I also feel like I'm in a holding pattern because I don't have a stretch goal.  It's more motivating to be progressing forward as opposed to doing the same mileage each week.  Maybe I'll try a longer run once a week to keep the feeling of accomplishment going.  Can anyone else relate to the post c25k plateau?

In the "penguin" thread, someone mentioned an app for the iPhone called Nike+GPS.  I downloaded it this morning and love it!  It was the perfect next step for me from the C25K program.  It keeps your pace, distance, calories burned, etc., your playlist.   You can set your reminders by distance or time, too. I love that when you start running, it will upload that info to Facebook and when your friends comment or "like" your post, you will hear a cheering crowd.  LOL!

My goals since graduation have been to increase my speed and my endurance.  This week, I had 2 good runs of 33 minutes, an excellent 45 min run with a distance of 4.2 miles (including my 10 mins of walking before and after) and then came today.

I downloaded some new music this morning, too based on recommendations from another new app, runningplaylist.  Another app I recommend- it gives you music suggestions based on the length of your planned run and the time you want to accomplish.  Yeah, I might have been a little overly ambitious in my choices.  In today's run, my short little legs were cooking. My average fastest speed is 13:50 mm with my usual average around 14:50.  With this new program, it told me that I had completed the first mile with an average pace of 10:26.  Unfortunately, I just couldn't maintain it and had to quit completely at a little over 21 minutes.  Not exactly what I was shooting for but hey, I learned 1) if I push myself, I can probably do a 10 mm and 2) I need to slow back down and work on my endurance before I push for speed again.  It was very hard for me not to cry when I had to stop but reality is that I can run longer.  I just can't run longer that fast.... yet.

Have a good weekend, friends!

Diane

Okay, I just bit the bullet and started the b210k this morning and guess what?  I nailed it.  In fact, I was visiting a friend in western, ma in one of the "hill towns" which as you can guess is hilly.  They live on the top of a mountain, so I walked down the mountain, ran the intervals on some mercifully gradual hills.  I "cooled down" by walking back up the mountain which was so steep, that I ended up stopping on the walking part!  The whole affair took about 70 minutes.  It was the best feeling to step it up and i feel very confident going into my next 5k in 3 weeks.             I have to say that I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the running today.  I thought it was going to be hard to do 40 minutes, but as someone else posted, the one minute intervals made it so do-able.  It was awesome!  I am a runner!

M.J., I am so proud of you for finding your running mojo again!  I think most of us have had the same experience of "I don't want to run.  Why do I even try?" and then doing it anyway.  That day was the best run I have ever had.  Maybe because we don't expect as much of ourselves, we find the fun again?  Don't know the reason behind it but I am glad that you are back in the swing of things.

You guys are making me so curious about B210K.  Keep posting your progress Lizzie- I am looking at you!).  Camcat82- congratulations on your graduation and your 1st race.  How did you feel when you crossed the finish line?

Diane