Monday, August 23, 2010

Couch to 5K: Week 5, Day 2 - Mulligan

The good news is, I'm running again and my knee seems to be better.  I felt what could best be described as a little tightness immediately after my run, but no pain.  I'm glad to be over that hurdle and that it turned out to be nothing serious. 

I'm taking a mulligan on today's attempt at repeating Week 5, Day 2.  I had originally planned to start back at W5D1 but I got to the 5 minute mark this morning and knew I could push to 8 minutes.  I figured, what the heck, if I can do 8 minutes once, I can do it twice.  Well, what I realize now is that I was really running hard that first 8 minutes.  I forgot how to pace myself in the 10 days I took off.  I really took off running at the beginning and realized it about a minute in, so I slowed some, but not nearly enough.  I was still running at a faster pace than I had been accustomed to.   

I finished the first 8 minutes and was feeling pretty good, though somewhat out of breath.  The 5 minute walk was over before I really felt ready but I took off anyway.  I made it to 6:30 before I had to walk and catch my breath.  My legs were burning and I couldn't keep my breath at a steady pace.  I walked just long enough to catch my breath and then made up the 1:30 that I had cut the run short by.  I didn't have anything left by the end of the run. 

Overall it wasn't as bad as I had expected.  I was afraid I might have set myself back a couple of weeks by taking 10 days off, but I'm pretty sure if I had paced myself a little better I could have done the W5D2 run as written.  I'm going to try the same routine again on Wednesday, except I'm going to start out a little slower and pace myself better.

Hopefully on Friday I'll be able to pull off the full 20 minute run.  

Today I did 2.35 miles in 31:26 for an overall pace of 13:23*.

* Just a note for clarification.  I'm including my warm up and cool down walks in the distance, time and pace calculations.

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