Couch to 5K: Week 9, Day 1

I've made it to week 9.  I've been at this since July, and thought I would be through the program by the middle of September.  Instead, here I am, almost 6 months later, finally ready to finish up.  I struggled through some unexpected injuries and setbacks and found that I'm not 18 anymore.  Even so, I healed, and pushed through, and I'm a healthier person because of it. 

I'm proud of myself.  Not in a conceited, I'm all that way, but in the sense that I know that I've done something that I wasn't sure I would be able to do.  I ran 30 minutes this morning.  No, make that 30 minutes and 52 seconds.  I only ran 2.8 miles in that time, but I ran a full 30 minutes.  Okay, it was more of a jog than a run, but when I first started the couch to 5K program, 5 minutes of slow jogging seemed like a pretty lofty goal.

Today's run ran the gamut of almost everything I've experienced over the last 6 months.  I was tired after 3 minutes and started to question whether I would make it 5, much less 30.  Then everything started to click, and I felt pretty good for a good portion of the run.  I felt a few twinges in my IT band here and there, most likely due to the cold, but that went away.  My quads started to tire a little over halfway through.  I found myself passing the time by planning out my day in my head and before I knew it, I was passing the big smiley face painted on the road that signaled I only had about 6 minutes left to go.  I knew I had at least 6 more minutes left, so I picked up the pace slightly until I hit the big(ish) hill at the end.  I ran up the hill at a pretty hard pace and then sprinted across the parking lot to the edge of the pavement. 

I have two more days to go before I "graduate".  I'm not sure what I'll do after that.  I know I want to continue to increase my distance, but not significantly.  I also want to work on running faster, but I want to make sure I can consistently run 35-40 minutes before I really start trying to increase my pace by much.  For now, I'll just take it one run at a time.  I'll try to increase distance by about 10% per week until I reach what I feel is a good plateau, and go from there.

Today's Stats:  I ran my normal 2.8 miles in 34:52 for a pace of 12:27/mile.  I seem to have slowed some recently.  I know I made a conscious effort to slow down today so I could make the full 30 minutes.  Maybe I'll take it just a little faster next time just to see if I can do it.  I'd like to be keep my pace better than 12.  I've done 2.8 in as little as 31:31.  What that tells me is if I speed up, I'm going to have to increase my distance a bit.  That should be no problem.

Next Up:  Week 9, Day 2.  I'll try to increase my speed and my mileage.  This will probably have to wait until Monday, as I have a pretty busy weekend planned.