C25K - week 5!

Hi all,

I am currently doing C25K, and I'm up to week 5 - I can see that by the end of this week I'm supposed to be able to run for 20 minutes in a row, but I've just finished week 5 day 1, and running for 5 minutes in a row is hard enough :/ Did anyone else find the program progressed a bit faster than what they were ready for?

I was thinking maybe I would just do week 5 day 1 for the week, and then next week do week 5 day 2, etc, but today when I did week 5 day 1 for the 2nd time the app marked me off as having done week 5 day 2. Bit OCD, but I didn't like that!

Yeah.. this is one of the reasons I don't like the C25K timing.  That's quite a jump in week 5.  You can definitely do what you're doing - repeat weeks or days until they're attainable before moving on.  I ended up switching to the 5k training plan that Zombies Run makes, since I found it to have a much better progression of training.  

I just went out and looked at the Zombie Run site.  That looks like a fun way to get moving.  Do you think it is good for someone who isn't at a level to run yet? 

Definitely!  I've been using the regular Zombies Run app (not the 5k training one) for years, and I started out just walking, or using the elliptical, or whatever.  You don't need to have the chases turned on, so it intermingles the "mission" segments with your own music.  It's a really fun story to listen to and I've always looked forward to finding out what will happen next!  It's a great motivator.  

It absolutely moved too fast for me and I almost gave up on running as being too difficult to me. You could definitely repeat days or weeks, but what worked for me is just running at my own pace without app timing. I wanted to enjoy the run without feeling like I wasn't up to par. I've gradually increased my distance and speed over time - I started in August and I'm now running just over 4 miles continuously.  I run outside so I use a mapmyrun app that gives you prompts on split times and distance and I've mapped out a few run courses so I know where to run based on the distance I'm aiming for that day.  You could easily do the same thing on the treadmill - just slow, steady progress with increasing time and/or distance between walk breaks.

I'm absolutely with you! I'm starting week 5 and I'm doing a 5K color run at the end of the month... holy crap that's a lot of running! It has me psyched out enough that I might skip the color run and do a different one a few weeks later.

How fast are you running during the "run" bits? I was trying to do 6 mph on the treadmill during the run bits, but then a friend told me it's better to jog at a more comfortable pace, so I scale down to 5 mph or so and it's much easier. Maybe slowing down would help a bit?