Today I was slated to run 20 minutes with no walking breaks. Even though I had already done it back in August, I was a little intimidated as I started my 5 minute warm up walk. I felt like I pushed my limits a bit on Wednesday and that was just two 8 minute runs. How in the world did I expect to go 20 minutes without stopping.
As I started to run, it just didn't feel right. I wasn't feeling it this morning. It was hard to get out of bed, stretching was more of a chore than usual, and putting one foot in front of the other at anything more than a lazy walk was more than I wanted to do. I forced myself into a jog and concentrated on just moving forward, making progress towards the goal. I worked to maintain a steady breathing rhythm. I mentally focused on my turn around point. As the minutes passed everything became easier. My stride became more natural feeling, my breathing fell into an easy pattern and I just let my body take over. Soon, my turn around appeared and I looked at my watch to see where I was. I had actually run somewhat more than 10 minutes when I turned around. Never one to be confident in my abilities, I was still unsure whether I would make it the full 20. I was feeling a little fatigued, but not exhausted. I tried to keep track mentally of how many minutes I thought remained and where I would be when my 20 minutes expired as I progressed towards the finish. I noted a point in my head where I would look at the watch and see how much time remained. I made it to that point and there was less than one minute left. I was far from exhausted, so I picked up the pace and lengthened my stride, not wanting to leave anything in reserve. I counted down the final 10 seconds in my head, about three steps per second at that speed. I had done it, again. As intimidated as I was, I felt pretty good having finished twenty minutes. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it might be.
Today's stats: I did my 2.48 miles in 30:51 for a pace of 12:26/mile. That's not my best pace, but it's still a full 20 seconds/mile faster than my average and 33 seconds/mile faster than the first time I did W5D3.
Next up: Week 6 Day 1 take 2. It was at this point that I had to take a month off previously to allow my left knee and IT band to heal from the punishment inflicted by the hike that shall remain unnamed. I don't think the C25K program had anything to do with it other than continuing to irritate an already irritated part of my body.
I have one more week until I venture into the uncharted territory of weeks 7-9. Week 6 day 3 says a final goodbye to walking with a 25 minute run and the runs get progressively longer after that until they reach 30 minutes each in week 9. The Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot is right in the middle of week 7. I'll probably just try to run as much of it as I can and walk the rest, hopefully saving enough energy to run across the finish. My goals are to finish, of course, and to beat my time in my last 5K.
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